Resumen de Before The Raising of the Cross: The Origins of Rubens's Earliest Antwerp Altarpieces
This essay argues that a design for a triptych whose authenticity has previously been rejected is both Rubens’s original program for the high altar of the Antwerp church of St. Walburgis and the source for two of his best-known altarpieces--The Real Presence in the Holy Sacrament and The Raising of the Cross. It also advances the hypothesis about the evolution of these works which provides a new perspective on Rubens’s response to the formal and iconographic demands of the Post-Tridentine Flemish altarpiece as well as new insights into his process of invention.
