Coronation of the Virgin

The Coronation of the Virgin, attributed to Rubens with a date of 1730, belongs to one of the grandest categories of Catholic iconography and one Rubens himself treated multiple times in his career. The subject — God the Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit crowning the Virgin as Queen of Heaven at her Assumption — required the painter to organize the full celestial hierarchy across multiple registers, deploying the complete arsenal of large-scale altarpiece composition. Rubens's authentic Coronation of the Virgin for the Augustinian church in Antwerp (now in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts) was among his most admired ecclesiastical commissions and spawned numerous copies and variations throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The work attributed to Rubens in the Museum Plantin-Moretus is part of this vast tradition of Rubenesque copies and variants that populated Flemish churches and collections long after his death; the subject remained popular for altarpieces because it encapsulated Catholic Marian theology in its most triumphant form. The Plantin-Moretus collection's group of late-dated Rubenesque pictures reflects the museum's origins as a private family collection rather than a critically curated public gallery.

The composition occupies a vertical format with the Trinity above and the Virgin below, surrounded by adoring angels and saints. The Rubenesque tradition renders the celestial zone in blazing gold and white light, with the Virgin's royal blue mantle providing a focal point amid the heavenly throng.