Assumption of the Virgin

Rubens's Assumption of the Virgin for the high altar of Antwerp Cathedral is one of the supreme achievements of Counter-Reformation painting in the Low Countries — a monumental composition in which the Virgin ascends heavenward on a cloud of angels while the assembled apostles and holy women gaze upward in wonder from around her empty tomb. The cathedral, the largest Gothic church in Belgium, already housed Rubens's most celebrated works: the Elevation of the Cross (1610-11) and the Descent from the Cross (1611-14) triptychs that had established his reputation as the greatest religious painter of his time. The Assumption altarpiece, painted for the high altar, completed Rubens's pictorial occupation of Antwerp's principal church in a way that had no precedent in the history of any single artist and a single building. The soaring vertical composition — the Virgin's figure rising through successive registers of angelic choir and cloud toward the illuminated heaven above — demonstrates Rubens's ability to organise complex multi-figure compositions in three-dimensional space while maintaining visual coherence and emotional force. The cathedral's Rubens works together constitute the most important concentration of his religious painting in a single ecclesiastical space.

The dynamic upward movement of the ascending Virgin and the animated apostles below create a powerfully vertical composition, with warm, saturated colors and energetic brushwork.

The dating of this work to 1501 appears to be an error, as Rubens was not born until 1577. This Assumption has undergone conservation over the centuries. The large altarpiece format presented challenges for preservation, and some areas show evidence of past restoration campaigns.