Before 'The Raising of the Cross': the origins of Rubens's earliest Antwerp altarpieces - painter Peter Paul Rubens

The period defined by means of Peter Paul Rubens's return to the Spanish Netherlands from Rome in December 1608 his appointment as court painter to the Archdukes Albert and Isabella in September 1609 and his signing of the contract for The Raising of the Cros [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 1 2 OMITTED] in June 1610 marks a critical phase in his oeuvre and in his career.(1) During these eighteen month Rubens was involved in a series of high-profile public commissions in Antwerp, including The Adoration of the Magi (Prado, Madrid), hung in the Town Hall, The Adoration of the Shepherds and The Real vicinity in the Holy Sacrament [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 3 OMITTED], high hilled in the Dominican Church (now St Paul), and The Assumption of the Virgin, intended for the high altar of Antwerp Cathedral; at the same time, he was involved in the execution of other pictures, similar as the monumental Samson and Delilah (National Gallery, London), for an elite circle of private patrons. It has also been propos that Rubens may have already begun work upon The Raising of the Cross(2) a cast for the no longer extant high altar of the former parish house of worship of St. Walburgis [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 4 OMITTED] that is arguably his greatest in quantity important altarpiece.

Although all of these paintings are well known, their earliest history is darksome As the most recent investigations present to view the documentation of these works is in the way that meager (or lacking altogether) and their preliminary studies are thus few (or even nonexistent) that questions of their origins and evolution have for the greatest in quantity part remained unanswered (or smooth unasked). That we have in the way that little information about the circumstances that l to the commission of major works similar as The Real Presence in the set apart Sacrament,(3) or, for that matter, The Raising of the Cross(4) is especially frustrating: this data might number us more about Rubens's reentry into the art world of the Spanish Netherlands following his eight years in Italy and about his later involvement in the program of house of worship renewal that coincided with the introduction of the Twelve Years suspension of hostilities (1609-21).(5) In particular, it would also give us a more informed basis for assessing Rubens's replication to the formal and iconographic demands of the Post-Tridentine Flemish altarpiece.(6)

This essay attempts to make greater faculty of perception of what we already know (or think we know) about Rubens's earliest Antwerp altarpieces through rigorously reevaluating the evidence amassed during the last four centuries in light of novel information and new perspectives. It not absents both an explanation of the origins and evolution of The Raising of the Cros and The Real neighborhood in the Holy Sacrament and a more general reassessment of Rubens's career just after his get back to Antwerp, a period that has received relatively little critical attention. This line of inquiry is now possible because of discoveries brought to light during the new restoration of The Raising of the Cros (initiated in 1978 and complet in 1992) and the succeeding publication of these findings in the technical report and related works upon the altarpiece's history and iconography.(7) It also draws upon significant new additions to the Rubens literatures and to research upon the political, religious, and cultural milieu of Antwerp and of the Spanish Netherlands more generally at the beginning of the seventeenth century(9)

De Bisschop's Drawings and Their Implications

sum of two units nearly identical drawings [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 5 6 OMITTED], the two of which have been tentatively attributed to the seventeenth-century Dutch artist Jan de Bisschop,(10) provide an important lock opener to the earliest history of Rubens's earliest Antwerp altarpieces.(11) As initially observ by dint of the noted Rubens scholar Ludwig Burchard,(12) the possessor of one of the drawings [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 5 OMITTED], one as well as the other works depict a triptych whose center panel is the modello (a preparatory oil drawing in this case presumed to be lost) for The Real neighborhood in the Holy Sacrament.(13) Likewise, the wings of the triptych have been identified as the sum of two units modelli in Dulwich [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 7 OMITTED], for the saints that were eventually execut upon the exterior of The Raising of the Cros [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 2 24 OMITTED].(14)

It appears likely that all three modelli were originally have a title toed by Cornelis van der Geest(15) a wealthy Antwerp merchant and art collector,(16) who was also Rubens's friend and mentor. Van der Geest has been identified as the putative donor of The Real neighborhood in the Holy Sacrament to the Chapel of the sacred Sacrament (also called the Venerabel Kapel), the chapel of the Sodality of the consecrated Name of Jesus (De Soeten Naem), in the Dominican Church;(17) he is also considered to be the probable instigator (and chief financial backer) of the commission for The Raising of the Cros a work for the high altar of St Walburgis, his parish house of worship located near his house in the Mattenstraat.(18) The history of the three modelli prior to the appearance of the Dulwich panels at a sale in The Hague upon September 4, 1747, is not known;(19) however, as Hans Vlieghe has noted,(20) the date of this sale is useful since it provides a terminus ante quem for the separation of the preparatory studies.