Circle of Peter Paul RUBENS (Siegen, Germany, 1577 - Antwerp, Belgium, 1640), last third of the 17th century. "Triumph of the Eucharist over Idolatry". After a model of the cardboard in the Museo del Prado (ca. 1625). Oil on canvas. Re-drawn. Paint leaps. Period frame (remade). Measurements: 110 x 169 cm; 134 x 195 cm (frame). Excellent painting of Flemish school, from the circle of Rubens, in which we recognise the model that the painter takes to represent this scene: the "Triumph of the Eucharist over Idolatry" by Rubens, one of the cartoons that served as models for the tapestry makers to make the tapestries of the Triumph of the Church destined to the Monastery of the Descalzas in Madrid. Specifically, the model corresponds to one of the six panels in the Museo del Prado. The present painting is of a high technical and compositional level, evident in every detail. The sculptural forcefulness of each figure makes the foreshortenings a striking scene that is a veritable trompe-l oeil. The highly allegorical scene is set between two sumptuous Solomonic columns. An angel, an allegory of the triumphant Church, appears in the upper right-hand corner. He carries a monstrance whose brilliance seems to dazzle and drive away idolatry, embodied in the calf whose horns the idolater pulls. The force of Good pushes the group to the right, causing each of the figures, representatives of paganism, to fall. The angels, amid festoons and garlands of fruit, allude to abundance and ecclesiastical virtues. The image of the classical god in the background reproduces the sculpture of Olympian Zeus by Phidias. The combination of pagan and Christian elements is characteristic of the culture of Christian humanism that predominated in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Around 1625, the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, governor of the Spanish Netherlands, commissioned Rubens to design a series of twenty tapestries for the Monastery of the Descalzas Reales, where all of them are still preserved. All the designs, painted on panel, deal with the theme of the Eucharist, the principal dogma of Catholicism that the Infanta defended. Rubens made several preparatory sketches for this series, which are among the best of his entire output and reveal his characteristic expressiveness and vitality, as well as his great knowledge of the works of art of Antiquity and the Renaissance.