The Apotheosis of the Hero

Follower of Peter Paul Rubens · c. 1635

Medium

Oil on panel

Original size

48.4 × 63.2 cm (19 1/16 × 24 7/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Baroque

Swirling with celestial light and the muscular dynamism of the Baroque, *The Apotheosis of the Hero* captures a mortal figure ascending into the divine — a subject that consumed the imagination of seventeenth-century European courts. The work is attributed to a close follower of Peter Paul Rubens, the Flemish master whose Antwerp studio trained some of the most technically accomplished painters of the age. Rubens himself produced several apotheosis compositions, most famously the ceiling of the Banqueting House in London, and his influence on this panel is unmistakable: the warm, golden flesh tones, the billowing drapery, and the confident foreshortening of figures in flight all bear the hallmarks of his workshop tradition. A follower painting in this vein would have absorbed Rubens's methods directly, studying his oil sketches and finished canvases as working models. The Art Institute of Chicago, where the original now resides, holds one of the foremost collections of European Old Masters in the United States, giving the painting a scholarly context that has helped preserve its attribution history. Our hand-painted oil reproduction on panel faithfully re-creates the tonal richness and compositional energy of the original, giving you a work that rewards close looking in the same way the Rubens circle intended.