Sir Peter Paul Rubens (Siegen 1577-1640 Antwerp)

This figure is a preparatory study for one of three angels, bearing the Instruments of the Passion, which were designed to surmount the marble pediment of the Jesuit Church in Antwerp. Its linear simplicity may be explained by this function as a design for sculpture, rather than for a painting. The planned decorative scheme is recorded in a drawing of the whole pediment by the architect Peter Huyssens (Antwerp, Archives of the Jesuit Church) and an engraving by Pieter Clouwet of the angel in the present drawing also exists (figs. 1-2). Further sculptures from the façade are shown in two drawings of angels with trumpets in the Morgan Library (invs. 1957.1 and I,233) and a study of a cartouche supported by putti at the British Museum (inv. Oo,9.28). Rubens was involved not only with the sculptural planning of the Jesuit Church, which was built between 1615 and 1621 by the architect Pieter Huyssens: he also contributed the two paintings for the altarpiece on the high altar, now in in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, and an extensive cycle of 39 ceiling paintings for the aisles and galleries, which were destroyed in a fire caused by a lightning strike in 1718.