The prime version of this large and finely rendered panel is Sir Peter Paul Rubens’s Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery (circa 1610-1615), today in the Royal Museums of Replica Handbags s of Belgium, Brussels.1 The present example’s high quality has led some scholars, including Max Rooses and Michael Jaffé, to consider it an autograph replica. Indeed, the painting is notable for its faithfulness to the prime in composition and painterly technique. Several workshop copies, later versions, and engravings of this composition are known, a test.mes nt to its success during the artist’s lifet.mes and its popularity among collects ors. One version, probably the original, was kept Rubens’s own collects ion until his death, while another is recorded in King Charles I’s inventory as hanging in Wimbledon House.2

The biblical story of Christ and the woman taken in adultery comes from the Gospel of John (8:1-11). While Christ was teaching the Scribes and Pharisees in the temple, he was brought a woman accused of adultery and asked to condone her stoning in accordance with the law of Moses. Exposing the hypocrisy of her accusers and imploring their mercy, Christ replied, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

Fig. 1. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Christ and the Woman taken into adultery, oil on canvas, London, Courtauld Institute of Art, inv. no. P.1978.PG.48

This particular subject proved popular among Flemish artists even in generations prior. In his famed grisaille at the Courtauld Gallery, for example, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1529-1569) captures a full-length Christ kneeling as he writes the aforementioned admonition to the Pharisees in the sand (fig. 1). In contrast, here Rubens, using a vivid palette, depicts the figures half-length, a visual device that helps emphasize the scene's emotional dynamism. In Rubens' composition, Christ’s retort to the Pharisees is recorded in a Hebrew inscription on the head covering of the man at right.

Fig. 2. Paulus Pontius, after Peter Paul Rubens, The Face of Christ, in profile to the left; against dark background, engraving, London, The British Museum, inv. no. 1891,0414.705. © The Trustees of the British Museum

Nearly all of the figures in this composition possess visual parallels with other works produced by Rubens and his studio, though here they are combined as a united whole. For example, the heads of the youth at left and the man in red at right appear in drawings in Copenhagen by William Panneels, after studies by Rubens;3 the profile figure of Christ relates to a now-lost modello known only through an engraving by Paulus Pontius (fig. 2);4 the white-bearded man to Christ's right occurs also in a head study (1612) at the Dayton Art Institute (fig. 3);5 the veiled woman appears in Rubens’s Entombment (1612) at the Getty;6 the scribe at far right is connected with a head study (circa 1609) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (fig. 4);7 and the youth peering in from the woman's right reappears both in Rubens’s Head Study of a Young Soldier in a private collects ion8 and at the center of the Judgement of Solomon in the Museo del Prado.9

left: Fig. 3. Peter Paul Rubens, Heads of an Old Man, oil on oak panel, Dayton, Dayton Art Institute, inv. no. 1960.82

Right: Fig. 4. Peter Paul Rubens, Study of two heads, oil on wood, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 67.187.99

A note on the provenance:

This panel once formed part of the collects ion of Oscar B. Cintas (1887-1957), an industrialist and arts patron who made his fortune in the sugar and railroad businesses and also served as Cuba's Ambassador to the United States from 1932-1934. A passionate collects or, he assembled a magnificent collects ion of European Old Masters, 20th century American masters, and renowned historical documents.

1. Inv. no. 3461, oil on panel, 143 by 194 cm.

2. Bulckens notes that the version formerly in the collects ion of Charles I may be a now-lost canvas measuring 140 by 212 cm. See Bulckens 2010, p. 126, under cat. no. 30, copy (2).

3. Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst, Kongelige Kobberstiksamling, respectively, inv. nos. KKSGB6644 and KKSGB7838.

4. London, British Museum, inv. no. 1891,0414.705.

5. Inv. no. 1960.82, oil on panel, 67.3 by 50.2 cm.

6. Inv. no. 93.PA.9, oil on canvas, 131.1 by 130.2 cm.

7. Inv. no. 67.187.99, oil on panel, 69.9 by 52.1 cm.

8.  Rubens: A Genius at Work: The Works of Peter Paul Rubens in the Royal Museums of Replica Handbags s of Belgium Reconsidered, exhibition catalogue, Tielt 2007, p. 76, reproduced fig. 4.

9. Inv. no. P001543, oil on canvas, 184 by 218.5 cm.