Elevation of the Cross

A cross in motion

In the centre of Peter Paul Rubens's Elevation of the Cross, a group of men pushes and pulls a heavy cross upward. It runs diagonally through the panel, with Christ fixed to it and lifted above the workers. One man braces his shoulder under the timber; others haul or grip it from different sides. Their bodies lean against the same weight. The cross has not yet settled into a vertical position, so the painting holds the action at its most strenuous point.

The reproduction here shows the three open panels together. The Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp^[1] dates the work 1609–10 and records it as oil on panel. The central panel measures 460 × 340 centimetres and each wing 460 × 150 centimetres. Open, it is approximately 6.4 metres wide. This scale matters because the action does not stop at the joints between the panels. Witnesses, soldiers, landscape and sky extend the event on both sides of the cross.

At a Glance

• ArtistPeter Paul Rubens ^[1]
• Date1609–10 ^[1]
• MediumOil on panel; triptych ^[1]
• DimensionsCentre 460 × 340 cm; each wing 460 × 150 cm ^[1]
• CollectionCathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp ^[1]
• Image scopeFull open triptych; exterior saints not visible ^[1][3][4]

Where this work sits in Rubens's career

Rubens's career

16001610162016301640

The Elevation of the Cross

1609–10

The Descent from the Cross

1611–14

The Garden of Love

1630–35

The Three Graces

1630–35

Contents

1. Reading the centre and the two open wings
2. What does “elevation” mean here?
3. From Saint Walburga's church to the cathedral
4. A first major public commission after Italy
5. From an oil design to Christ's finished pose
6. What conservation can and cannot show
7. A new design for the later engraving
8. Beside The Descent from the Cross

Reading the centre and the two open wings

The most forceful line begins near the lower left of the central scene and rises through the cross toward Christ's head. The workers' arms and legs push against that line at different angles. One figure pulls from behind while another carries weight from below. Rubens makes the labour easy to understand even in a crowded scene: the raised timber is the common task that connects each body. Christ, in contrast, is fixed to the cross and faces upward. The distance between his stillness and their violent exertion gives the centre its tension.

The left wing holds a group of Christ's followers. The cathedral's account^[1] identifies John and the grieving Virgin Mary among them. Their closeness to Christ matters, but they cannot alter what the executioners are doing. They watch or turn away as the cross rises. A mother and child in the lower part of the wing extend the scene beyond the familiar named witnesses, making the crowd feel like people caught at the edge of an event.

On the right wing, mounted and armed figures belong to the machinery of the execution. An Antwerp church heritage description^[2] identifies a Roman officer on horseback, along with the two other condemned men. The three panels thus hold several groups at once: Christ and those raising him at the centre; grieving followers at one side; authorities and further violence at the other. The wings are part of a single visual field, yet they give different answers to the event in the middle.

Rubens joins them with landscape and atmosphere. A rocky ground continues behind the figures; clouds and light make the sky part of the drama. The central diagonal is answered by smaller slanting gestures and glances across the wings. These connections keep the triptych from reading as three separate illustrations. They also direct the eye repeatedly toward Christ, whether it begins with the mourners on the left or the soldiers on the right.

The broad panorama was a striking use of a triptych. The Antwerp heritage account^[2] stresses that the open wings were spread fully and that the ground and clouds continue across their boundaries. The joints do not divide time into three episodes. They enlarge one event. On the right, another condemned man is being led toward his punishment while the cross in the centre rises. On the left, the mourners' bodies make the consequences of the act visible before it has even finished. The painting holds these simultaneous actions together through the direction of the great timber.

Some details require a closer view than the full-triptych splash offers. The Antwerp account identifies the Roman standard on the right with the letters SPQR and notes the sign fixed to Christ's cross. It also sees an impending darkening of the sky above the right wing. These details add political authority and an approaching cosmic response to what could otherwise look like the exertion of anonymous labourers. The execution is ordered and witnessed, not an isolated struggle with wood and rope.

What does “elevation” mean here?

At its most direct, the title names the physical raising of the cross after Christ has been nailed to it. The event is not yet completed. That distinction makes the workers' effort and the cross's precarious angle essential, rather than incidental detail. The cathedral's interpretation^[1] also asks viewers to consider the positions of followers, executioners and hostile figures in relation to Christ. This is a devotional reading offered by the present-day cathedral; it should not be mistaken for a surviving account of Rubens's private thoughts about every figure.

Christ's face is a focus amid the muscular bodies below. The cathedral relates his expression to words spoken from the cross in the Gospel accounts. Those sayings help explain a Christian viewer's response to the scene, but the painting should not be treated as a literal depiction of all those utterances happening at a single instant. What is visible is an upward gaze, a body on a moving cross, and several human responses unfolding around it.

From Saint Walburga's church to the cathedral

The painting was made for the high altar of Saint Walburga's church in Antwerp, according to the Antwerp heritage account^[2]. That account links the commission to the church wardens and names the merchant Cornelis van der Geest as an important promoter. It explains why the unusually large open triptych would have been visible across the church. The original setting was not the cathedral where the work stands today. After Saint Walburga's church faced demolition in the nineteenth century, the panels were moved to the Cathedral of Our Lady; Dulwich Picture Gallery^[4] dates the church's demolition to 1817.

The closed triptych presents another aspect of that first setting. Its exterior wings show Saints Amandus and Walburga paired with Saints Catherine of Alexandria and Eligius. Dulwich holds two small preparatory oil sketches for those exterior paintings, one for each pair^[3]. They are modelli, not pieces cut from the finished Antwerp altarpiece. Dulwich notes that the finished panels differ from the studies in how angels place crowns or haloes. This evidence makes the closed wings part of the commission's story, while keeping the actual objects separate. The reproduction here shows the interior crucifixion scene; it does not show those four saints.

A first major public commission after Italy

An Antwerp church exhibition account^[5] places the order in 1609 with the wardens of Saint Walburga's church. It says the collector Cornelis van der Geest handled negotiations and may have contributed substantially to the agreed 2,600 guilders. The qualification matters: his role in arranging the commission is recorded in the account, but the precise amount he supplied is presented as probable. The same source calls the altarpiece Rubens's first major public commission after his return from Italy. Its monumental scale and prominent high altar setting put his newly developed pictorial language before a large Antwerp audience.

The earlier church cannot be recovered simply by looking at the painting in today's cathedral. A seventeenth-century interior painting discussed by Antwerp church heritage^[6] shows the Saint Walburga high altar on a raised choir, with the Elevation installed there. That record helps establish the physical distance and height from which early viewers approached the triptych. Its relocation eventually allowed it to be seen beside the Descent, a powerful comparison, but the two were not designed as pendants for the same cathedral space.

The physical arrangement shaped the commission. Antwerp church heritage describes the choir as about three metres higher than the nave floor, with a long space separating altar and congregation. The approximately 4.6-metre-high triptych and 6.4-metre open width helped the action carry across that distance. The upward diagonal would have been seen from below as the painted cross rose behind the altar. This explains scale as a practical devotional choice, not simply a desire to make the largest possible picture. Present-day visitors see the triptych in another position; a photograph cannot reproduce the particular angle from which Saint Walburga's congregation saw it.

The closed wings once had a much more frequent role than their modern reproductions suggest. According to the Antwerp account, the triptych was closed for much of the year. The four patron saints, painted in a restrained brownish palette enlivened with small areas of colour, therefore formed the everyday face of the work. The spectacular crucifixion panorama was a different mode of display. Rubens had to make both states meaningful for the same high altar. The Dulwich sketches help trace his preparation for that quieter exterior, while the finished interior demonstrates what the altarpiece could reveal when opened.

The exterior sketches in Dulwich add another piece of the making process. Their small scale let Rubens test the four standing saints before the immense wings were completed. Dulwich identifies changes in the angels' crowns and haloes between sketches and finished paintings, suggesting that the design was still negotiable. Its statement that a patron may have prompted the change remains a possibility, not a surviving instruction. The finished altarpiece therefore preserves one outcome of a process visible in smaller related objects.

The RKD's fuller catalogue of the Dulwich pair^[11] adds a further distinction. The two small oak panels, now numbered DPG40A and DPG40B, were joined until about 1947; their present separation is part of their later material history. The catalogue also discusses a scholarly proposal by Cynthia Lawrence that the saints were first conceived for a different arrangement at Saint Walburga's altar, alongside a design related to Rubens's Real Presence in the Holy Sacrament at Saint Paul's church. It calls that reconstruction persuasive but also describes alternative explanations for the later drawings on which it depends. The saints' role as studies for the finished exterior wings is secure; their exact place in every earlier proposed altar scheme remains debated.

From an oil design to Christ's finished pose

A Harvard Art Museums drawing catalogue^[9] gives unusually direct evidence of Rubens revising the central action. Harvard holds a chalk-and-charcoal Study for Christ for “The Elevation of the Cross” (1949.3), dated 1610–11. It studies Christ's head, arms and torso at roughly 40 × 30 centimetres. Rubens drew even the tip of the left thumb separately at the upper right when the whole hand no longer fitted on the sheet. The small addition suggests how carefully he worked out a pose that would become larger than life in the altar painting.

The Harvard study came after an oil modello now in the Louvre. In the earlier design, the cross and Christ's body lie flatter, making the body strongly foreshortened. In the final triptych, the cross is turned so that Christ faces the viewer more fully; his torso twists with the tension visible in the Harvard study. The drawing's modelling of arms, chest, light and shadow corresponds closely to the large panel, though Rubens added the beard, crown of thorns and wounds in the painting. This sequence lets us describe an actual design change, rather than assume that the first composition in the artist's mind was the one now on the altar.

Harvard's catalogue also records studies for three executioners and two variants for the Virgin's hands. It cautions that some other drawings once attached to this altarpiece were identified incorrectly. Related sheets therefore help reconstruct the design only when their relationship is supported by the catalogue, not merely by a similar subject. The museum dates the commission to June 1610 and notes a substantial payment in August 1611, which it takes to mean the ensemble was largely complete by then. The cathedral's concise “1609–10” label and this documentary production account do not express the same kind of date; the latter makes clear that work continued into 1611.

A separate Louvre drawing^[10], INV 20188 recto, is also titled The Elevation of the Cross. Its catalogue describes a more square study of the triptych's composition, made in black chalk and washes with coloured touches. Crucially, the Louvre's present maker field says school of Rubens, with Rubens himself listed only as a former attribution. This sheet is not the oil modello in the Louvre and not Harvard's autograph figure study. Keeping the three objects apart prevents a general phrase such as “Rubens's Louvre study” from quietly restoring an attribution that the museum has qualified.

Harvard also reconstructs a larger original altar ensemble. The surviving triptych was accompanied by a three-part predella below and, above it, a painted God the Father, a gilded wooden pelican and two contour-cut painted angels. The subordinate elements were dispersed after the ensemble was dismantled in 1733. The panels we now view in the cathedral are thus the main surviving part of a taller, more elaborate structure. That is another reason a present-day front-facing photograph cannot reproduce the scale or framing of the first high altar.

The lower paintings had subjects of their own. The Antwerp church exhibition account^[16] identifies the three predella scenes as Christ on the Cross in the centre, angels taking the body of Saint Catherine on the left and a miracle of Saint Walburga on the right. The RKD's Dulwich catalogue^[11] identifies the surviving Ship Miracle of Saint Walburga as a separate panel in Leipzig; it describes the Catherine predella as lost or of unknown present whereabouts. These details tie the high altar's small lower paintings to the saints of the exterior wings. They also show why “the triptych” and “the original high altar” are different extents of the work: some parts of the larger setting survived elsewhere, while others cannot now be inspected in place.

The oil modello as an object in its own right

The Louvre's record for the oil modello^[14] makes the first painted design easier to distinguish from both the Antwerp panels and the Louvre's separate school-of-Rubens drawing. Its MNR 411 is a three-part oil-on-wood sketch, only 68 × 107 centimetres, dated about 1609–10. The museum identifies it specifically as a study for the high altar of Saint Walburga. At that size, Rubens could test the whole spread of the triptych on a surface much smaller than a single finished wing. The modello supplied a plan for the commission; Harvard's later figure study and the finished painting show him changing important poses within that plan.

The sketch has a documented life separate from the finished altar. The Louvre traces nineteenth- and early twentieth-century collectors and records its purchase in 1941 by Maria Dietrich from the Tuffier family, followed by a sale to the planned Linz museum. It was recovered after the war and assigned to the Louvre in 1950. The museum marks it as an MNR recovery work, held pending identification of a rightful owner. That status applies to the small Paris sketch, not to the large triptych that remains in Antwerp. It matters here because the related objects have not only different sizes and functions but different custodial histories. Saying “the Louvre Elevation” without an inventory number would obscure which object a source concerns.

A soldier's stance tested in chalk

A catalogued Rubens figure study^[15] adds another close view of the design process. It shows a nearly nude young man pushing upward with raised arms. In the finished central panel, the related figure appears in armour, helping to lift the cross. Rubens studied the body beneath its eventual costume, so that the strain of the legs and torso could remain legible after the figure was dressed. The drawing is one of several large chalk studies connected with this commission; it is not a sketch for the overall three-panel arrangement.

The catalogue notes a revision visible on the sheet: Rubens first placed the man's left leg farther forward and more bent, then drew it closer to the other leg. The finished painting follows the latter position. This is a small adjustment with a large narrative effect. A tighter stance makes the man seem able to drive force upward against the weight above him. The catalogue proposes that this sheet may have been made alongside, or even before, the Louvre oil sketch, rather than after it like some other figure studies. That relative dating is a scholarly proposal, not a dated note written on the drawing. It shows why the making of the triptych is better understood as repeated testing of bodies and actions than as a rigid sequence in which every figure was fixed by one approved modello.

What conservation can and cannot show

The Belgian Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage's 1992 research bulletin^[12] devotes a full study to the Elevation: the panels' construction, dating of the wings' wood, paint layers, organic colourants, condition and treatment. A published abstract by its conservators^[13] explains that earlier interventions left abrasions and overpaint, even though major losses in the painted surface were scarce. Specialists chose partial cleaning to balance areas in different condition. That does not supply a licence to call every visible colour an untouched seventeenth-century surface. It does explain why close reading should distinguish Rubens's design from the long material life of the panels.

A new design for the later engraving

The design circulated again near the end of Rubens's life, but the printmaking sequence has an important intermediate stage. The Art Gallery of Ontario^[8] holds his distinct Raising of the Cross oil sketch of about 1638, inventory 906. It is oil on paper, later mounted on canvas, and the AGO currently gives its size as 72.1 × 132.7 centimetres. The museum says Rubens made it as the model for an engraving by Jan, or Hans, Witdoeck, using the earlier Antwerp triptych as the basis. This late sketch is neither the first oil modello for the Saint Walburga commission nor a reduced physical section of the cathedral panels. It is a newly worked design for a different medium, more than twenty-five years after the original altar painting.

The National Gallery of Art in Washington^[7] holds an impression of Witdoeck's 1638 engraving, made from three plates on three joined sheets. Its object record describes the raised cross, mounted figures, mourners and another condemned man. It also transcribes the print's statement that its model was the Saint Walburga painting. The inscription records the design's famous source, while the AGO's surviving oil sketch shows that the engraver had a later painted model between himself and the monumental triptych. The RKD Dulwich catalogue^[11] explicitly places the AGO sketch before Witdoeck's print. Saying simply that the engraving was copied directly from the Antwerp panels would conceal that stage of Rubens's work.

The dedication is particularly revealing. The NGA transcribes it to Cornelis van der Geest and records his leading role in promoting the Saint Walburga painting. The AGO likewise explains that the later print was dedicated to him. This printed testimony supports the church heritage account's emphasis on his role, though it does not by itself settle how the original commission's cost was divided. A viewer who knew the event through the engraving could follow the central diagonal and surrounding groups without standing before the altarpiece. Yet the engraving, the Toronto oil-on-paper design and the Antwerp oak triptych are three separate objects with different dates, scales and uses.

Beside The Descent from the Cross

Rubens's Descent from the Cross now stands in the same cathedral. The two paintings can be compared through their diagonals: here the cross and Christ rise against the exertion of the executioners; there Christ's body is carefully lowered into the arms of followers. But the works had different original patrons and settings. The Descent was commissioned for the cathedral's guild of arquebusiers, while the Elevation belonged to Saint Walburga's high altar. The open wings differ too. In the Descent they show the Visitation and Presentation; in the Elevation they extend the crowd around the crucifixion. Seeing those differences prevents their similar monumental scale from flattening them into a single project.

Rubens artworks directory

128 artworks

Search artworks Medium All media Drawing Painting Reset

Name	Date	Medium
A Seated Lion / Study of a Seated Lion	Circa 1612–1613	Drawing
Adam and Eve	1598–1600	Painting
Albert Rubens in Profile to the Left	Circa 1619	Drawing
Allegory of Emperor Charles V as Ruler of the World	Circa 1604	Painting
An Autumn Landscape with a View of Het Steen in the Early Morning	Probably 1636	Painting
Atalanta and Meleager Hunting the Calydonian Boar	1635–1640	Painting
Bildnis einer Frau / Portrait of a Woman (traditionally identified as Isabella Brant)		Painting
Christ on the Cross / Christus aan het kruis (oil modello)	1628	Painting
Cows, Study for a Painting		Drawing
Daniel in the Lions' Den	Circa 1614–1616	Painting
Das Opfer Abrahams / The Sacrifice of Abraham (drawing after Titian)		Drawing
Der Triumph des Siegers / The Triumph of Victory	Circa 1614	Painting
Diana and Callisto	Circa 1635	Painting
Don Diego Messía (Mexía) Felipe de Guzmán, Marquis of Leganés		Drawing
Epitaph of Nicolaas Rockox and His Wife Adriana Perez (traditionally The Incredulity of Thomas)	1613–1615	Painting
Equestrian Portrait of Giovan Carlo Doria / Ritratto di Giovan Carlo Doria a cavallo	1607–1608	Painting
Equestrian Portrait of the Duke of Lerma	1603	Painting
Ex-voto: Virgin and Child with portraits of the donors Alexandre Goubau and Anna Anthony		Painting
Ganymede / Ganymed	1611–1612	Painting
Georges Villiers, Herzog von Buckingham / George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham		Drawing
Gesatteltes Pferd / Saddled Horse	Circa 1615–1618	Drawing
Head of a Woman with Downcast Eyes (study for the Madonna of the Ildefonso Altarpiece)		Drawing
I quattro filosofi / The Four Philosophers	Circa 1611–1612	Painting
Ignudo Turning to the Right (after Michelangelo)	Circa 1606	Drawing
Juno and Argus	Circa 1610	Painting
La Marche de Silène / The Procession of Silenus		Drawing
Lamentation over the Dead Christ / Compianto su Cristo morto	1601–1602	Painting
Landscape with Philemon and Baucis		Painting
Landscape with St George and the Dragon	1630–1635	Painting
Landscape with the Ruins of the Palatine Hill in Rome / Paysage avec les ruines du mont Palatin à Rome	Circa 1614–1618	Painting
Leda and the Swan (Stephen Mazoh collection version)	Before 1600	Painting
Les Pèlerins d'Emmaüs / The Supper at Emmaus (Saint-Eustache version)	Circa 1608–1611	Painting
Madonna della Vallicella Adored by Angels / Madonna con Bambino e angeli	1606–1608	Painting
Madonna in a Garland of Flowers / Madonna im Blumenkranz	Circa 1616–1618	Painting
Madonna Surrounded by Saints / Madonna met heiligen	Circa 1630	Painting
Marchesa Brigida Spinola Doria	1606	Painting
Marchesa Maria Serra Pallavicino (?)	1606	Painting
Marie de Medici, Queen of France	Circa 1622	Painting
Mercury and Argus / Merkur und Argus	Circa 1635–1638	Painting
Neptune Calming the Tempest (Quos Ego); modello for the Cardinal Infante's voyage	1635	Painting
Nikolaus Rubens		Drawing
Ochse / Ox	Circa 1618	Drawing
Old Woman and Boy with Candles	Circa 1616–1617	Painting
Pan and Syrinx	Circa 1617	Painting
Perseus and Andromeda		Painting
Perseus frees Andromeda	1620–1622	Painting
Philippe Rubens, the Artist's Brother	1610	Painting
Portrait du duc de Lerma / Study for the Equestrian Portrait of the Duke of Lerma	Circa 1603	Drawing
Portrait of a Bearded Man / Bildnis eines Mannes mit Vollbart	Circa 1604–1605	Drawing
Portrait of a Man, Possibly an Architect or Geographer	1597	Painting
Portrait of Aletheia Talbot, Countess of Arundel	1620	Painting
Portrait of Anne of Austria, Queen of France	Circa 1622	Painting
Portrait of George Gerbier, son of Balthasar Gerbier (identification qualified)	1629–1630	Drawing
Portrait of Isabella Brant (portrait drawing)	Circa 1620–1621	Drawing
Portrait of Louis XIII, King of France	Circa 1622	Painting
Portrait of Marie de Médicis as a Triumphant Queen		Painting
Portrait of Nicolas Trigault in Chinese Costume	1617	Drawing
Portrait of the Emperor Charles V (after Titian)	Circa 1603–1605	Painting
Prometheus Bound		Painting
Romulus and Remus / Romolo e Remo	1612	Painting
Rubens and Isabella Brant in the Honeysuckle Bower	Circa 1609–1610	Painting
Saint George and the Dragon	1606–1608	Painting
Saint Gregory with Saints, venerating the Madonna of Vallicella	1606–1607	Painting
Saint James the Greater / Santiago el Mayor	1610–1612	Painting
Saint Jerome in His Study / Der heilige Hieronymus	Circa 1609–1610	Painting
Saint Sebastian / Der heilige Sebastian	Circa 1612–1618	Painting
Saints Amandus and Walburga, exterior wing of The Elevation of the Cross	1609–1610	Painting
Saints Catherine of Alexandria and Eligius, exterior wing of The Elevation of the Cross	1609–1610	Painting
Salome Presented with the Head of Saint John the Baptist	Circa 1609	Painting
Samson and Delilah	Circa 1609–1611	Painting
Satyr and Maid with Fruit Basket	Circa 1615	Painting
Scipio and Hannibal before the Battle of Zama		Drawing
Self-portrait	1623	Painting
Self-Portrait in a Circle of Friends from Mantua	Circa 1602–1605	Painting
Study of the Laocoön and His Sons (after the ancient Vatican sculpture)	Circa 1600–1608	Drawing
Summer: Peasants Going to Market		Painting
Susanna Fourment	Circa 1620	Drawing
The Adoration of the Magi / L'Adoration des mages	Circa 1617–1618	Painting
The Annunciation	Circa 1610	Painting
The Arrival of the Queen at Lyon (Meeting of King and Queen, 9 December 1600)		Painting
The Assumption of the Virgin Mary	1625–1626	Painting
The Baptism of Christ	1604–1605	Painting
The Battle of Anghiari (drawing after Leonardo's lost composition)		Drawing
The Battle of the Amazons / Die Amazonenschlacht	Circa 1618	Painting
The Capture of Jülich, 1 September 1610		Painting
The Child with the Bird / Das Kind mit dem Vogel		Painting
The Circumcision of Christ / La Circoncisione di Gesù	1605	Painting
The Consequences of War	1638	Painting
The Defeat of Sennacherib / Die Niederlage Sanheribs	Circa 1617	Painting
The Descent from the Cross, triptych	1611–1614	Painting
The Discovery of the Child Erichthonius / Die Auffindung des Erichthoniusknaben	Circa 1616	Painting
The Disembarkation of the Queen at Marseille, 3 November 1600		Painting
The Elevation / Raising of the Cross, triptych	1609–1610	Painting
The Entombment / Graflegging	1615–1617	Drawing
The Fall of Phaeton	Circa 1604–05	Painting
The Feast of Herod	Circa 1635–1638	Painting
The Feast of Venus	1636–1637	Painting
The Garden of Love / El jardín del amor	1630–1635	Painting
The Gonzaga Family in Adoration of the Holy Trinity / La famiglia Gonzaga in adorazione della Santissima Trinità		Painting
The Head of Medusa		Painting
The Hippopotamus and Crocodile Hunt	Circa 1616	Painting
The Holy Family with Saint Anne	Circa 1630	Painting
The Holy Family with Saint Elizabeth and Saint John the Baptist	1614–1615	Painting
The Immaculate Conception	1628–1629	Painting
The Judgement of Paris (Prado early Italian-period version)	1606–1608	Painting
The Kermesse / La Kermesse (also Village Festival)	Circa 1635–1638	Painting
The Lamentation of Christ / Die Beweinung Christi	1610–1611	Painting
The Last Supper / Institution of the Eucharist	1631–1632	Painting
The Lion Hunt / Löwenjagd	1621	Painting
The Massacre of the Innocents		Painting
The Massacre of the Innocents (early Toronto version)	Circa 1610	Painting
The Rainbow Landscape	Circa 1636	Painting
The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus / Raub der Töchter des Leukippos	Circa 1618	Painting
The Resurrection of Christ, Jan Moretus epitaph triptych	1611–1612	Painting
The Return from the Fields / Ritorno dai campi	Circa 1632–1634	Painting
The Three Graces	1630–1635	Painting
The Triumph of the Eucharist over Idolatry	Circa 1625	Painting
Three Groups of Apostles in a Last Supper (recto); Three Sketches for Medea and Her Children (verso)	About 1601–1602	Drawing
Three Women Holding Garlands (after Francesco Primaticcio)	Circa 1622–1627	Drawing
Two Young Women, the One on the Left Holding a Dog / Zwei junge Frauen, die linke hält einen Hund	Circa 1616–1618	Drawing
Venus and Adonis (Hermitage swan-chariot version)	1610–1611	Painting
Venus and Adonis (Metropolitan Museum late version)		Painting
Venus Frigida	1614	Painting
Venus in Front of the Mirror / The Toilet of Venus	Circa 1614–1615	Painting
Venus Lamenting over the Dead Adonis	Circa 1612	Drawing
Venus, Amor, Bacchus und Ceres / Venus, Cupid, Bacchus and Ceres	Circa 1612–1613	Painting
Wolf and Fox Hunt	Circa 1616	Painting
Young Woman Looking Down (Study for the Head of Saint Apollonia)	Circa 1628	Drawing

Frequently Asked Questions

References

1. Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp, The Elevation of the Cross : date, medium, dimensions and interpretation. View source
2. Antwerp Churches and Tourism, The Raising of the Cross : original setting and panel reading. View source
3. Dulwich Picture Gallery, Saints Amandus and Walburga , preparatory sketch. View source
4. Dulwich Picture Gallery, Saints Catherine of Alexandria and Eligius , paired preparatory sketch. View source
5. Antwerp Churches and Tourism, 2004 exhibition account of the Saint Walburga commission. View source
6. Antwerp Churches and Tourism, Saint Walburga interior image and later placement. View source
7. National Gallery of Art, Jan Witdoeck's 1638 engraving after The Elevation of the Cross. View source
8. Art Gallery of Ontario, Rubens's 1638 oil-on-paper Raising of the Cross made for Witdoeck's engraving. View source
9. Harvard Art Museums, Rubens's study for Christ and William W. Robinson's catalogue of the altarpiece's design sequence. View source
10. Louvre, L'Élévation du Christ en Croix , INV 20188 recto, currently catalogued as school of Rubens. View source
11. RKD Studies, full Dulwich catalogue of DPG40A and DPG40B and their relationship to the altarpiece. View source
12. Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage, 1992 bulletin on the Elevation 's materials and restoration. View source
13. N. Goetghebeur and colleagues, abstract of the partial-cleaning study. View source
14. Musée du Louvre, Rubens, L'Erection de la croix , oil modello MNR 411 and its collection history. View source
15. Sotheby's specialist catalogue, Rubens's chalk study of the soldier with raised arms for the Antwerp triptych. View source
16. Antwerp church exhibition account. View source

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