The Massacre of the Innocents
Peter Paul Rubens
$47.00
Select sizeSize guide
- 380g/m² cotton canvas — certified museum quality
- Solid wood stretcher bar with 0.75” gallery wrap
- HD Giclée print — colour-true to the original
- Ready to hang — hanging hardware included
The Massacre of the Innocents, painted around 1611–12 by the Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens shortly after his return to Antwerp from Italy, is one of the most visceral history paintings of the entire Baroque. It depicts the biblical slaughter ordered by King Herod in Bethlehem — soldiers wrenching infants from their mothers' arms in a composition built from interlocking, writhing bodies that Rubens drew directly from the classical sculpture and Italian masters he had studied in Rome and Mantua.
The painting's rediscovery in 2002, after centuries in obscurity, caused a sensation: it sold at auction for £49.5 million, a record for an Old Master at the time, confirming what scholars had long suspected from its handling — the raw, muscular energy, the Caravaggesque light, the direct quotation of Titian's "Death of Actaeon" in the fleeing woman at right — that this was Rubens at the height of his early Antwerp power.
Now held in the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (Thomson Collection), this masterwork is presented here as a premium stretched canvas reproduction, printed on museum-quality matte canvas and hand-wrapped around a sturdy 0.75-inch gallery wrap frame — ready to display and built to last.
| Artist | Peter Paul Rubens |
| Year | c. 1611–12 |
| Medium | Oil on oak panel |
| Dimensions | 55 7/8 x 71 5/8 in. (142 x 182 cm) |
| Collection | Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto |
| Movement | Baroque |
