The Passion of Christ. (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard)

Rubens was well placed to take advantage of the increasing demand for scenes of Christ's Passion in the Southern Netherlands at the beginning of the 17th Century. He had developed a reputation for his religious paintings in Italy, and his return to Antwerp coincided with the efforts of the Catholic Church to restore and replace altarpieces damaged by the Calvinists. The influence of classical sculpture and of Titian, Michelangelo and Caravaggio is evident in the monumental quality of his compositions, which at the same time evoke his deeply held religious beliefs and his determination to give his viewers the sense of witnessing a moment in history.