The Prophets David and Daniel c. 1601 - 1602

Peter Paul Rubens rendered this drawing of the Old Testament prophets David and Daniel in red chalk sometime in the early 17th century. Rubens was working in Antwerp in the Spanish Netherlands, a Catholic region in a time of religious wars. As such, the Church was the principal patron of the arts and drawings like this one served as preparatory sketches for larger altarpieces. Notice how Rubens uses red chalk to model the figures, emphasizing the weight of their bodies and the folds of their garments. The prophets carry scrolls that would have been inscribed with passages of scripture. An angel hovers behind them, hinting at the divine inspiration that guided their writing. Rubens’s art borrows liberally from classical antiquity and the Italian Renaissance, but it’s also a product of the Counter-Reformation. Historians analyze how the art of this period was commissioned and consumed in the service of religious and political ideologies. This drawing by Rubens speaks to the complex historical and cultural conditions that shaped artistic production in the early modern world.