The Transfiguration

The Transfiguration (c. 1604-06) at the Museum of Fine Arts of Nancy was painted during Rubens's Italian years, when he was engaged in the most competitive artistic environment in Europe. The subject — Christ's divine transformation on Mount Tabor before the astonished disciples, in which his face shone like the sun and his garments became white as light — had received its most celebrated Renaissance treatment in Raphael's final painting, left unfinished at his death in 1520 and completed by Giulio Romano. Rubens's decision to treat the same subject was a conscious challenge to this precedent, and his version brings the Baroque's dramatic energy and physical immediacy to a scene that Raphael had treated as a formal problem of divine light and human reaction. The compositional structure that separates the divine transfiguration above from the chaotic scene of the possessed boy below — a structure Raphael had established — is maintained, but Rubens transforms the visual temperature throughout. The Museum of Fine Arts of Nancy's holding represents French provincial museums' significant accumulations of Italian-period Rubens works.

The composition creates a dramatic contrast between the radiant Christ above and the dazzled apostles below. Rubens' warm palette and bold lighting effects show his early synthesis of Italian artistic traditions.

This early Transfiguration from 1605 has been conserved over the centuries. The dramatic contrast between the divine radiance above and the overwhelmed mortals below has been maintained. The canvas has been relined. Some areas of the luminous upper register have been retouched.