The Massacre of the Innocents

A knot of bodies before a row of columns. Soldiers, naked like ancient athletes, wrench children from their mothers; one swings a child high above his head. A woman claws at a soldier's face.

Rubens painted the picture soon after his return from eight years in Italy; the bodies show what he had studied there, antique sculpture and Caravaggio. For a long time it was taken for the work of a minor painter. When it was recognised and sold in London in 2002, it fetched the highest price ever paid until then for an Old Master.