Saints Catherine of Alexandria and Eligius

The paired works of Saints Catherine of Alexandria and Eligius and Saints Amandus and Walburga, 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 Catherine of Alexandria was a fourth-century saint who was martyred for her Christian faith. She is paired here with Saint Eligius who brought the Christian faith to Flanders in the sixth to seventh century. Saint Catherine’s right hand leans elegantly on her sword while in her left she holds a palm, the emblem of a martyred saint. When she refused to renounce her Christian faith, her martyrdom involved being bound to a spiked wheel, the wheel becoming her saintly attribute. Though she was miraculously delivered from this torture by a heavenly thunderbolt, she was later beheaded. Here, Saint Catherine gazes upwards to the heavens while her companion, Saint Eligius, looks at her, seemingly in admiration.  

Following a period in Italy (1600-08), Rubens worked in his home city of Antwerp, where he designed large scale projects such as the altarpiece to which these sketches relate. 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.