Saints Amandus and Walburga

The paired works of Saints Amandus and Walburga and Saints Catherine of Alexandria and Eligius, by the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), are small preparatory oil sketches (or modelli in Italian), designed to form the outer protective wings of an altarpiece, which serves in a Christian church as a focal object for devotion. All four saints were considered special and sacred to the city of Antwerp, Belgium, where Rubens was working. Saint Amandus was a Bishop who preached Christianity in Flanders in the seventh century and here he is paired with the eighth-century abbess and missionary, Saint Walburga. Saint Amandus, wrapped in his voluminous clerical cloak refers to an open book, while Saint Walburga looks outwards, her hand delicately gathering her gown to her waist. Both hold their staffs or croziers.  

Following a period in Italy (1600-8), Rubens worked in his home city of Antwerp, where he designed large scale projects such as the altarpiece that these sketches relate to. The finished paintings, in contrast to the Dulwich sketches, have the angels concentrated on crowning the male saints with their bishops’ mitres rather than placing the haloes on the heads of the female saints. Such changes were all part of the process of a major commission, and it may have been Rubens’ patron who suggested the change after seeing these sketches. The paired paintings, originally commissioned for the high altar of St Walburga’s church, Antwerp, in 1610, can be seen today in Antwerp Cathedral, following the demolition St Walburga’s church in 1817. The finished three panelled painting (or triptych) depicts The Raising of the Cross and, when the two outer panels are folded inwards, the standing figures of the four saints are displayed. A related drawing of Saints Amandus and Walburga is at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London.