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Look up to the two angels raising the Eucharist under the central arch, then find the archduchess in her nun’s habit among the kneeling figures at lower left.
Rubens painted this small, detailed sketch while designing a series of tapestries for the convent of Las Descalzas Reales in Madrid. Angels with musical instruments fill the upper tier and earthly worshippers kneel in the lower tier, all honoring the Eucharist, a central sacrament of the Catholic Church. The patron of the series, the Spanish archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia, appears among them in a nun’s habit.
Oil on panel · 31.5 × 32 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Baroque
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Details and source
- Museum title
- The Adoration of the Eucharist
- Artist
- Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640)
- Date
- c. 1626
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Dimensions
- 31.5 × 32 cm (12 1/2 × 12 1/2 in.); Framed: 47.6 × 47.6 × 7 cm (18 3/4 × 18 3/4 × 2 3/4 in.)
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection
- 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.