“You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath…” (Ex 20, 4 and Dt 5, 8)

A twelve-year truce, in the middle of a protracted war: today also, many would welcome that. Around 1607, both the troops of the Spanish king, our sovereign, and those of the Republic, our northern neighbours, were exhausted, physically and financially. After difficult negotiations, direct confrontations did not occur between 1609 and 1621 – but no longer than that.

Rubens returned from Italy in this period. Many churches here were still empty then, after the Iconoclasm of 1566 and 1581. Not all guilds had already ordered a new work of art for their altar.
But now, supply and demand found each other. After the Council of Trent (1545-1563), the Baroque imagery is intended to express the triumph of the Catholic Counter-Reformation: it was an investment in visual media, by using the dramatic techniques of Baroque painting. In this way, hearts and minds should be conquered.

At the same time art had to respect realism, to render human anatomy correctly, and it should reproduce the text of the Gospel faithfully. A dose of panache is added on top of the humanist ideal of the Renaissance.

We end this tour in the Cathedral of Our Lady, where no less than four original works by Rubens can be admired. They give you a nearly complete overview of his mastery and oeuvre; but first, let’s take a quick look at Otto van Veen’s best work.