Peter Paul Rubens Circle

Circle of PETER PAUL RUBENS (Siegen, Germany, 1577 - Antwerp, Belgium, 1640); 17th century.
"The Triumph of the Eucharist over Idolatry".
Oil on copper.
It has a label of the Board of Seizure, Protection and Conservation of the National Artistic Treasure, Madrid.
It presents faults in the pictorial surface.
It has a XIX century frame.
Measurements: 70 x 87 cm: 94 x 108 cm (frame).
Painting of the Flemish school of the circle of Rubens, in which we recognize the model that the painter takes to represent this scene: the "Triumph of the Eucharist over Idolatry" of Rubens, one of the cartoons that served as models for the tapestry makers to make the tapestries of the Triumph of the Church destined to the Monastery of the Descalzas of Madrid. Specifically, the model corresponds to one of the six panels in the Museo del Prado. The painting in question is of a high technical and compositional level, appreciable in every detail. The sculptural forcefulness of each character turns the foreshortenings into a striking scene that configures an authentic trompe-l'oeil. An angel, allegory of the triumphant Church, appears in the upper right corner. He carries a monstrance whose brightness seems to dazzle and drive away idolatry, incarnated in the calf whose horns the idolater pulls. The force of Good pushes the group to the right, making each of the figures, representatives of paganism, fall. The angels, among festoons and garlands of fruit, allude to abundance and ecclesiastical virtues. The image of the classical god in the background reproduces the sculpture of Olympian Zeus by Phidias. The combination of pagan and Christian elements is characteristic of the culture of Christian humanism that predominated in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Around 1625, the Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia, governor of the Spanish Netherlands, commissioned Rubens to design a series of twenty tapestries for the Descalzas Reales Monastery, where all of them are still preserved. All the designs, painted on panel, deal with the theme of the Eucharist, the main dogma of Catholicism that the Infanta defended. Rubens made several preparatory sketches for this series, which are among the best of his entire production, and show his characteristic expressiveness and vitality, and his great knowledge of the works of art of Antiquity and the Renaissance.