The Assumption of the Virgin
The original, as its museum records it
Every line above is reproduced from the holding institution’s own catalogue entry, which is linked. Where their title, date or attribution differs from ours, theirs is the one printed here.
The file this print is made from
Sizes
About this painting
The evidence is an absence. Rubens opens a grave and puts nothing in it — the cathedral's account of the finished altarpiece has three young women and an elderly lady finding only the shroud, and Paul standing in for absent Thomas, keeping the symbolic twelve. No Gospel narrates the Assumption.
This is the modello, brushed fast for the patron's approval. The cathedral's dean, Johannes del Rio, paid for the altarpiece himself, as settlement for a tomb promised him at the northern entrance to the sanctuary.
He died in early 1624. Rubens did not start painting until the summer of 1625.
Sources: Mauritshuis official object page, inv. 926 · Finestre sull'Arte, 'Rubens in Flanders: the four great masterpieces in Antwerp Cathedral' · TOPA (Toerismepastoraal Antwerpen), Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp, 'OLV Mary's Assumption (P.P. Rubens)'.
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 6,000 px master of the original. The whole image is printed — never cropped to fit the sheet — so every sheet carries an archival margin, and the dimensions and resolution listed above are the ones you receive.