The Massacre of the 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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View in the galleryAbout this painting
The soldier at the right, about to dash a child against the stone, is standing in the pose of Michelangelo's risen Christ. The Rubens House draws the conclusion itself: Michelangelo's Christ conquers death; this man causes it.
A woman claws at another soldier's eyes in the attitude of the Laocoön, the antique father who could not save his sons. Rubens had just come home from Italy, and he wanted Antwerp to see he had been there.
It hung in an Austrian monastery under another man's name until 2002.
Sources: c. 1610, oil on panel, 142 × 183 cm, accession 2014/1581 · the soldier taken from Christ in Michelangelo's Resurrection, and the Laocoön behind the clawing woman; Rubens as pictor doctus just back from Italy · attributed to Jan van den Hoecke until Sotheby's identified it as Rubens weeks before the 2002 sale · it hung unnoticed in a corridor of an Austrian monastery before the sale
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)
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 9,101 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.