Kristus på vejen til Golgata. Korsbæringen

Rubens painted this small panel in 1634 as one of a series of oil sketches for the high altarpiece of the abbey church at Affligem, near Brussels; the finished altarpiece is now in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, and the Copenhagen panel is the last of the studies that led to it. Everything is set down in a quick, sketch-like manner, in thin brown oil paint handled almost as if it were watercolour, with colour reserved for a few passages — the way, the museum notes, a painter fixes an idea for a crowded composition before committing it to a larger canvas. In the foreground Roman soldiers drag away the two thieves, Dismas and Gestas; in the middle Christ has just fallen under the weight of the cross, while Veronica comes forward to wipe his face; behind them a swarm of cavalry with lances and standards climbs the hill and disappears behind a rock. The episode of Veronica comes not from the Gospels but from the apocryphal Acts of Pilate and the Golden Legend, in which she is joined to Peter and Paul as a founder of the Roman church. Rubens was in his late fifties when the Affligem commission reached him, and the scholar Richard Judson dates the changes between this sketch and its predecessors to his conversations with the Archbishop of Mechelen, Jacob Boonen, and the president of the Council of Brabant, Pieter Roose, in 1634. It is held in the Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark).