One of the greatest catalogue projects in the history of art history is nearing its finish line. The entirety of Rubens’s output along with related sketches, drawings, variants, and copies engaged the work of multiple generations of scholars in coordination with Antwerp’s Rubenianum for well over a half-century, then consistently and beautifully produced, often in multiple volumes as here, initially by Phaidon, since the late 1970s by Harvey Miller and Brepols Publishers. Among the volumes still to come are Part IV, 2: Madonnas and the Holy Family, again by Fiona Healy, and Part IV, 3: Madonnas and the Holy Family: The Large Altarpieces, by Brecht Vanoppen, as well as the reconstructed Theoretical Notebook and a crucial third volume of mythological subjects. But applause for this outstanding individual volume – along with the project as a whole, now supervised by Nils Büttner and a distinguished editorial board – is richly merited.

Ironically, at this late date the focus begins with one of Rubens’s earliest masterpieces: his 1605 Adoration of the Holy Trinity by the Gonzaga Family, for the Chapel of the Holy Trinity in Mantua’s Jesuit church, Santissimia Trinità. Its dismemberment and meticulous reconstruction here by Fiona Healy with Brecht Vanoppen constitute a crucial element of this study. Rubens’s project, produced ca. 1604-05 during his work at the Gonzaga court, offers a first major large-scale instance of the great decorative programs that would mark his entire career. Three generations of the Gonzaga dynasty appear in prayer beneath a tapestry vision of the Trinity, borne by angels.

But wait, there’s more, as old television advertisements teased us. Because the theme of the Virgin Mary occupied such a major element of Rubens’s own pious output for his Catholic patrons, this volume also engages with Marian themes, including both her early life and her central role in images of both the Immaculate Conception and the Woman of the Apocalypse, along with that other element of the Mantuan canvas, the Trinity. As a final bonus, two other massive canvases produced by the artist for the same chapel of Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga, but later dispersed, also receive treatment here: The Transfiguration (Nancy) and The Baptism of Christ (Antwerp). These two other Gospel appearances of the Trinity already had been anticipated in works at Rome’s Jesuit mother church, Il Gesù.

Healy’s meticulous research goes beyond the principal Gonzaga works themselves, dismembered and redistributed by 1801 in the wake of the Napoleonic wars, to consider their sources and influences at this formative moment in Rubens’s early development. She begins by charting the history of the Gonzaga dynasty, the significance of the chosen church for the Gonzagas, followed by the history of all three paintings, including the main canvas’s fragmentation, whose documents are collected in an appendix with translations.

Chalk portrait studies of two Gonzaga princes (ca. 1601-03; Stockholm) preceded the main canvas. All the studies and fragments are considered collectively (Cat. no. 1, 1-12) as part of the whole, subject of the remarkable computerized reconstruction by Healy and Brecht Vanoppen (pp. 35-45; fig. 18, also including missing dogs and halberdiers). Healy subtly notes that Rubens’s inclusion of the Trinity on a fictive tapestry allows for a vision that appears only indirectly to the ducal family below (of course, Rubens would play with fictive tapestries and would design actual tapestries, or both, e.g. in his Eucharist Series [Nora de Poorter, Part II] and Achilles Series [Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, Part X]). Varied Italian sources shaped the main concept, including sculpted Escorial portraits of the Habsburg royal family in prayer by Pompeo Leoni, recently experienced by Rubens in Spain. Solomonic spiral columns link to Old Saint Peter’s and Rome. Healy offers many other source connections, complete with illustrations, and she attempts to identify each Gonzaga individual in the fragments (nos. 1-2/1-7), plus the halberdiers (1-8/1-9). One lost halberdier (no. 1-10, figs. 27-28, 112), reconstructed with a jaunty extended elbow, was likely a Rubens self-portrait before a Doric column at the right margin, just as Rubens would later insert a self-portrait as an attendant at the right edge of his Adoration of the Magi (1609), when he reworked it with additions during his return to Spain in 1629-29 (fig. 118).

The Baptism’s massive, detailed modello (Paris, Louvre, no. 2a, fig. 155), squared for transfer, suggests that Rubens’s commission came prior to his visit to Spain in 1603-04, though technical study reveals alterations made during his execution to that work upon his return, while composing the main Gonzaga canvas. In composing The Baptism, Rubens allowed for its oblique angle on the left side in the chapel. For sources, besides its obvious debts to Michelangelo’s nudes and Rubens’s drawings of ancient sculptures in Rome, Healy follows Max Rooses in evoking a source in the disrobing figures by Raphael in his Vatican Loggia Baptism, plus the Christ of Sebastiano del Piombo’s Flagellation, plus other models for individual figures. Rubens also adapted Raphael’s vertical Transfiguration for his own horizontal canvas of that subject (no. 3; fig. 156). Though no modello survives, the Nancy canvas also reveals numerous changes during execution.

In the remaining half of her Corpus volume, Fiona Healy examines related imagery of both the Trinity and the heavenly aspects of the Virgin Mary. She begins with the Trinitarian Pieta (Antwerp, ca. 1619-21; no. 4; fig. 173) and its numerous copies, including prints. Its female patron and Carmelite location are discussed, and Healy outlines its late medieval iconography, noting that Rubens adapted it to a nearly square format through dramatic foreshortening of Christ’s body. A more traditional enthroned  Holy Trinity (Munich/Neuburg, ca. 1616-17,; no. 5, fig. 199) is here attributed to the studio. It resembles the former side-by-side vision above the Gonzagas but with an added globe below. Another fine studio version, perhaps the originating commission, adds holy figures below (Weimar, early 1620s; no. 6; fig. 213). An extant autograph oil sketch (Basel, ca. 1616; no. 6b, fig. 229) and various copies of a lost version also feature a globe suspended by cherubs. Moreover, a copy by Henrick van Balen still hangs in its original chapel site at Antwerp’s Jacobskerk.

Turning to the heavenly Madonna, Healy begins with Madrid’s Immaculate Conception (1629; no. 7, fig. 233), painted during Rubens’s Spanish mission for the Marqués de Leganés as a gift to King Philip IV. This work surely is by Rubens himself, despite an earlier attribution to Quellinus. Healy usefully surveys the history of the doctrine as well as its importance in current Spanish painting and in particular for Philip IV. A related earlier painting of this subject, painted for a Brussels church, the Finistère Madonna (1626-27; no. 8, fig. 248), looks complete, but was cut up into four pieces, two of the Madonna and two angels, which are now missing or in private collections (nos. 8-1, 8-4, 8-2, 8-3; figs. 261, 278, 268, 269). That original composition is also preserved in a Bolswert engraving. This set of entries thus restores an important Rubens Madonna painting to the Corpus.

Another highlight of this volume is its probing discussion of Rubens’s colossal Munich Virgin as the Woman of the Apocalypse (1623-25; no. 9; fig. 284), commissioned by the prince-bishop for the high altar of Freising Cathedral. Contracts survive, included as Appendix III. The source text, Revelation 12, also provided imagery that served as a martial rallying-point, Santa Maria della Victoria, for Catholics against their varied opponents (p. 252), in the manner of St. Michael in the Fall of the Rebel Angels.^[1] Following Konrad Renger, Healy also notes the crescent moon derived from Galileo’s published illustrations. The oil sketch for the Munich painting survives (Los Angeles, Getty Museum, no. 9a, fig. 308).

Another oil sketch of Mary as Queen of Heaven in a private collection (after 1625; no. 10, fig. 309), Regina Coelorum in a Niche, repeats an Albertina drawing (no. 11, fig. 317) and gave rise to Cornelis Galle’s engraving within a more elaborate niche with accompanying verses (fig. 316), plus several copies of a close-up half-length, preserved only in copies (no. 12). Finally, a horizontal oil sketch (missing; early 1630s; no. 14, fig. 333) surrounds the enthroned Regina Coelorum with eight saints, a composition redolent of the glorious St. Ildefonso Triptych (Vienna; figs. 335-36).

The remainder of this Corpus volume examines images from the Virgin’s youth, left homeless by earlier publications. First, a Birth of the Virgin drawing (Paris, Petit Palais, 1612-14; no. 14, fig. 344), unconnected to any painting. Healy begins by discussing the iconography of this subject, as she compares its figures to Rubens’s Antwerp Descent from the Cross Triptych. An Education of the Virgin with Her Parents (private coll., ca. 1608/11; no. 15, fig. 354), first published in 2019, had studio assistance and shows disparate scales between holy parents and daughter. This work of uncertain date emerged around the time of Rubens’s early years back in Antwerp from Rome Comparison with a related image, Mary with Saints Anne and Joachim (Antwerp; ca. 1630-35, no. 16, fig. 364) shows the artist’s confident later development of interactive figures with lustrous, Titian-influenced coloration. That work, also replicated in a Bolswert engraving, emerged from Antwerp’s St. Anne Chapel of the Carmelite church. Finally, a pair of related works about the Virgin’s early life: an oil sketch (Liechtenstein Collections; ca. 1609-10; no. 17a, fig. 374) may have been followed by a lost altarpiece of this unusual subject for the Brussels Carmelites, as Nora De Poorter claimed. Here, the figure of the young Mary derives closely from an ancient Roman Pudicitia, goddess of modesty. Last of the canvases discussed is a more traditional Marriage of the Virgin (Norrköpping, Sweden, early 1630s; no. 18, fig. 385), a popular work that generated many copies.

In sum, this Corpus volume more than fulfils the high standards of the whole series. It minutely recounts the essential object data, including technical notes, provenance, and bibliography, while assessing a date of origin and incidents of object history, including copies, richly illustrated. It adduces sources and models for figures and iconographic traditions interpreted by Rubens. Where drawings and oil sketches survive, those receive the same treatment. But Healy’s volume stands out even within its series because of its depth of research and thoroughness, including the Gonzaga family tree and Appendixes of documents in original language plus translation. Little wonder that Healy’s discussions fill two substantial, richly illustrated volumes, where nearly four hundred images, many in color, provide foundations for the scholarly assessment of this side of Rubens’s religious output. A review can barely suggest the depth of research and attention to detail included within this brilliant volume. Perhaps the smaller number of works permitted the author’s remarkable thoroughness and clarity, but clearly also her lifetime of Rubens scholarship and engagement with these objects combined to culminate in this brilliant contribution to the Rubens Corpus.  

Larry Silver
University of Pennsylvania, emeritus

[1] Also, Larry Silver, “Full of Grace: ‘Mariolatry’ in Post-Reformation Germany,” in Michael Cole and Rebecca Zorach, eds., The Idol in the Age of Art (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 295-321.