Abstract
Ostensibly, this remarkable book by Ruth S. Noyes is merely a study of two altar pieces commissioned between 1606 and 1608 by the Oratorian community of Rome from Peter Paul Rubens, then just a promising young Flemish painter making his Grand Tour of Italy. The first, the Oratorians rejected. It is now in the Musée de Grenoble. The second still looms over the high altar of the Oratorian Chiesa Nuova today. The rejection of one altar piece and the acceptance of another may seem unpromising ingredients for a puzzle worthy of a detective story. Indeed, Noyes even cites a charming letter from Rubens offering the rejected altar piece to the aristocratic Gonzaga family, claiming that the saints depicted ‘have no symbols or identifying attributes that could just as well be applied to any other kind of saint’. Spoiler alert: Rubens was being far from truthful. Noyes’s eye-opening unravelling of the mystery of the two altar pieces teaches us about the ways in which sanctity was experienced, represented and contested in early Seicento Rome and the central mediating role played by art in all these aspects.
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