A Twisted Hand: Affective Iconography in Peter Paul Rubens’s Adoration of the Magi

Abstract

After his return from Italy in 1608, Peter Paul Rubens received a commission to depict an Adoration of the Magi for the Statenkamer in Antwerp’s Town Hall. It was the first, grand display of his stylistic and iconographic innovations. By building on unexplored contemporary sources and close reading of the iconography, this article posits that Rubens’s canvas served as a questie on various matters under discussion at the time, and was designed to induce divergent affects in the beholders.