The Virgin and Child Surrounded by the Holy Innocents
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
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About this painting
Look at the children crowded around her — none has wings. Several carry palm fronds, the mark tradition gives martyrs, because these are the Holy Innocents, the infants of Bethlehem killed on Herod's order, not angels. A popular title once called this the Virgin with Angels; the Louvre traces that name to a mistaken engraving.
He painted it around 1618, its grouping owing to Titian and Pordenone. "The children die for Christ, though they do not know it," preached Quodvultdeus, bishop of Carthage. Herod was hunting one child, and Rubens has put him in the middle of them.
Sources: Musée du Louvre, INV 1763 / MR 995. · Palm as the martyrs' attribute, theological basis for reading the infants as martyr-figures · Quodvultdeus of Carthage, 'Sermo 2 de Symbolo' (PL 40, 655). · Office of Readings, Holy Innocents, 28 December. · Crossroads Initiative, 'Holy Innocents, Children yet Martyrs — Quodvultdeus'. · Matthew 2:16, Douay-Rheims (Challoner).
Then Herod perceiving that he was deluded by the wise men, was exceeding angry: and sending killed all the menchildren that were in Bethlehem, and in all the borders thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men.
Matthew 2:16 · Douay-Rheims (Challoner), from the project’s own corpus at data/bible_drc.js
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 10,668 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.