Focus on this artwork and discuss the History.
The triptych was commissioned around 1613 by Nicolaas Rockox (1560–1640) and his spouse Adriana Perez (1568–1619) for their funerary monument in the Recollects church in Antwerp. Rockox was a mayor of Antwerp and a close personal friend and important patron of Rubens. Adriana Perez was the granddaughter of Spanish conversos who had arrived in Antwerp during the early sixteenth century.The work is dated in the upper left corner of the left panel. The year was changed from '1613' to '1615', presumably because Rubens started the painting in 1613, but only finished it in 1615 and then hung in the Lady Chapel behind the choir in the Recollects church in Antwerp. In any case, the epitaph was commissioned before the death of the patrons. It often happened that funerary monuments were completed before – or vice versa: only some time after – a death.
The triptych was confiscated by the French invaders in 1794 for the Musée du Louvre in Paris. In 1815 the composition was returned to Antwerp and transferred to the newly established museum in Antwerp.
Louvre Nicolaas Rockox