The Rubens House > Collection > Paintings > Rubens’ own work > St Clare of Assisi
St Clare of Assisi
This sketch is a modello in grisaille for one of the 39 ceiling paintings Rubens made for the Jesuit Church.
In order to ensure that the pictures would be shown to advantage at such a great height, the artist used a foreshortened perspective, making the figures smaller than they would be in reality. In Catholic seventeenth-century art, the art of the Counterreformation, certain saints cropped up more than others. The Virgin Mary, the martyrs and any saints with a reputation for fighting heretics, like St Clare, were especially popular.
The ceiling paintings were completed by 1621. Less than a century later, in 1718, they were lost in a fire. Fortunately, a large number of the preparatory studies in oil have been preserved.
Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)
St Clare of Assisi
oil sketch on panel