The Triptych of St. Ildefonso

In 1588 the brother of Emperor Rudolf II and viceroy of Portugal, Albert VII, founded the St. Ildefonso Brotherhood in Lisbon. Following the appointment of Albert and his wife Isabella (a daughter of the Spanish King Philip II) as sovereign regents of the Spanish Netherlands, he moved the headquarters of the brotherhood to Brussels in 1603. This explains why a saint seldom revered in Flanders found his way into one of the most significant altarpieces of Rubens’s late period. The infanta commissioned the work in Albert’s memory in 1630, nine years after his death. According to legend, while walking through his church one day, the Spanish monk (605–667; 657 archbishop of Toledo) was surprised by a blazing light and the vision of the Virgin Mary on a throne, accompanied by two female saints. While his companions took flight, he approached the venerated saint and was presented with a precious chasuble she had made herself. The donors appear on the wings of the altar in the company of their patron saints. Rubens had not used the form of the triptych since 1618. Why the painter and client chose this antiquated type more than a decade later remains unclear. Perhaps the depiction of the donor and her (by then deceased) husband to the right and left of the central panel was an attempt to circumvent an order issued in 1608, which – although not always obeyed – forbade the use of portraits of living people in the central altar panel. The wings, however, are so closely tied to the centre panel with regards to composition that the physical division of the three sections by the frame is of hardly any consequence: the red of the velvet draped over the two prie-dieux returns in the garment of the Virgin Mary, while the yellow-gold colour of the regents’ attire is reflected in the niche behind the throne. Conversely, the dark robes of the patron saints form a tonal unity with the habit of the male protagonist. The distinctive feature of this monumental work is that every part of it is in Rubens’s own hand. This, however, does not apply to the outer side panels (The Holy Family Beneath an Apple Tree; KHM,GG 698), which have also been preserved but are now separated from the original triptych. © Cäcilia Bischoff, Masterpieces of the Picture Gallery. A Brief Guide to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 2010