Peter Paul Rubens

Lore & Background

Rubens painted *The Elevation of the Cross* for the high altar of the St. Walburga Church in Antwerp. The triptych was placed above the high altar, which could be reached by a set of stairs, making it visible from a great distance in the large Gothic church. This height was unusual for an altarpiece. The work was surrounded on all sides by images of God, Jesus and angels. Under the triptych were originally three predellas showing the body of St Catherine borne away by angels, the miracle of St Walburga and Jesus on the Cross. At the top of the structure was a gilded wooden pelican, a common symbolic representation of Jesus derived from the ancient legend of a pelican which hacked its brood to death and later brought them back to life with its own blood. In 1733, the church administrators obtained a license to sell the three small pictures placed under the central panel. In 1737, the three figures that surmounted the triptych were sold to the Stock Exchange of Antwerp. The predellas were bought by private persons and their current whereabouts are unknown. After French Revolutionary armies occupied Antwerp in 1693, the St. Walburga Church was closed. The triptych was taken to Paris in 1794, along with Rubens's *The Descent from the Cross*. It was returned to Antwerp at the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, but since the Church of St. Walburga had become a ruin and was later demolished, it was placed in the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp. *The Elevation of the Cross* and *The Descent From the Cross* were removed a second time in 1914 when the German occupiers took them to the Berlin Palace in Berlin. They were returned to the Cathedral.

Reader's Guide

Rubens's *The Elevation of the Cross* is a winged altarpiece with hinged wings that can be folded over the central panel, allowing an 'open view' and a 'closed view'. The three panels on the obverse side depict episodes from the Passion of Jesus at the moment of the raising of the Cross. The principal scene on the central panel shows a group of 9 men comprising Roman soldiers, an old man wearing a turban and muscular half-naked men straining to haul, lift and push up the cross on which Jesus is already nailed. One of the men is a knight in a cuirass who may be a self-portrait of Rubens. The left wing shows witnesses including John the Apostle and Jesus's mother Mary, along with a group comprising a child, one old woman and three young women. The right wing shows the two men executed alongside Jesus, one supine as he is being attached to his cross while the other with tied hands is aggressively pushed forward by two men. The reverse side of the wings depicts four saints: Saint Amand, St. Walburga, Saint Catherine of Alexandria and Saint Eligius. Rubens made oil sketches in grisaille of the shutters, which are in the Dulwich Picture Gallery collection. For the muscular figures and their poses, Rubens drew inspiration from Antique sculptures including the Laocoön, Niobids and Farnese Bull. The influence of Italian Renaissance and Baroque artists such as Michelangelo, Tintoretto and Caravaggio are also apparent. Rubens took inspiration from Tintoretto's Crucifixion in the Scuola di San Rocco in Venice, borrowing the arrangement of pulling, pushing and lifting men around the cross being raised. Rubens's use of tenebrism shows the influence of Caravaggio.

Did You Know?

• The triptych was Rubens's first important religious commission after returning to Antwerp in late 1608 from a long stay in Italy.
• One of the men in the central panel is a knight in a cuirass who may be a self-portrait of Rubens.
• The triptych was originally placed above the high altar of the St. Walburga Church, at an unusual height that made it visible from a great distance.
• The work was taken to Paris in 1794 and later to Berlin in 1914 by German occupiers, before being returned to the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp.
• Rubens based Jesus's facial expression on the father figure from the Laocoön statue group.