(Siegen 1577–1640 Antwerp)
The Christ Child and the Infant Saint John the Baptist,
oil on canvas, 110 x 150 cm, framed

The present painting is one of the most charming compositions conceived by the Antwerp master, its popularity being attested to by printed reproductions produced in Rubens’s own workshop during the master’s lifetime. According to Jaffé, the prima idea or prototype of this composition is considered lost, but several workshop variants in whose completion the master participated have survived. Ever since Max Rooses, who regarded a smaller panel in the Palazzo Balbi in Genoa as the original version, several variants have competed for the title of prime example. A version once owned by the patrician Spinola family and offered at auction at Dorotheum, Vienna, in 2010, likewise came from Genoa. Another version of this composition was sold at Sotheby’s, New York, in 2001.

It can be assumed that the original was probably made for a Genoese patron, which is suggested by the version at the Palazzo Balbi and by the variant formerly in the possession of the House of Spinola. Given that at least two printed reproductions and several painted versions of the composition are known and taking into account what was common practice in Rubens’s workshop, it is highly likely that the original painting was present in his studio over a lengthy period of time, which in fact contributed to the popularity of the composition. It should be added that Rubens frequently painted several versions of a successful composition on various supports.

In the seventeenth century, the distinction between an original work and a work made in collaboration with assistants was irrelevant. When ordering a painting from Peter Paul Rubens, one was well aware that it would be completed with the help of his workshop collaborators. Only very expensive and very rare small-sized works to be exclusively executed by the master were ordered as such. Considering the high quality of the present painting, it may indeed have been ordered as an autograph work – for it was self-evident in those days that the workshop would collaborate. The existence of replicas of a felicitous pictorial invention is typical of the master and of his workshop’s practice, particularly in the case of popular subject matter.

The prototype was usually kept in the studio over an extensive period of time, which would allow Rubens and his collaborators to copy or vary it. Similarly, the early production of engravings suggests that the painting had been intended to be reproduced at an early stage and that several versions of the composition were created in the process. On the one hand, Peter Paul Rubens was highly innovative when it came to the invention and composition of new pictorial settings, but on the other hand he frequently dealt with a particular composition for a very long time before it finally became a finished painting, preceded, as usual, by a comprehensive creative process that was so characteristic of his approach. Even after a commissioned painting had been delivered, Rubens continued to elaborate on a composition that had once been deemed successful, using it, for example, for future projects, as study material, or as a model for printmaking.

The procedure of using studies for both their original purpose and their reproduction as prints was highly typical of Rubens’s workshop. Rubens also reworked his finished paintings, which mostly happened when new ideas occurred to him in the process of reproduction. In this context it is certainly important that the present version is evidently most closely related to an engraving by Christoffel Jaeger.