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Imagine the panel overhead: the knees and red robe loom toward you while the saint’s head tips back into the sky, with a cherub on either side.
Rubens made this sketch and 38 others as he prepared the ceiling paintings for the Jesuit church in Antwerp, and he showed such finished sketches to patrons as proposals. The saint is Albert of Louvain, a 12th-century martyr and the patron saint of Archduke Albert, who governed the Spanish Netherlands. Seen from far below, he was meant to look as if he were gliding through open sky above the church.
Oil on panel · 34.7 × 45.8 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Baroque
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Details and source
- Museum title
- St. Albert of Louvain
- Artist
- Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577-1640)
- Date
- 1620
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Dimensions
- 34.7 × 45.8 cm (13 5/8 × 18 in.); Framed: 58.5 × 69.3 × 6.4 cm (23 × 27 1/4 × 2 1/2 in.)
- Credit line
- Bequest of Dr. John J. Ireland
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.