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Fr. Patrick, founder of @christianart steps into the grand galleries of the Wallace Collection to encounter two masterpieces by Peter Paul Rubens: Christ’s Charge to Peter and The Holy Family with Saints Elizabeth and John the Baptist. Painted in the early 17th century, these works embody the spirit of the Baroque — a style born from the Catholic Church’s bold and confident response to the Reformation.
In The Holy Family, Rubens draws our eyes along a sweeping diagonal: Joseph leaning above, Mary and Elizabeth below, and the Christ Child pointing toward John the Baptist as His forerunner. The triangular grouping holds the family together — intimate, dynamic, and already foreshadowing Christ’s mission.
Just metres away, Christ’s Charge to Peter unfolds along the opposite diagonal. The risen Christ, wounds still visible, hands two keys to Peter: one gold for heaven, one dark for earth. His gesture extends toward the sheep — a reminder that true leadership in the Church is not power but the care of souls. Peter kneels in humility, receiving authority with awe, while Rubens bathes the scene in light and movement.
Rubens himself was shaped by the upheavals of his age. Born in Antwerp in 1577, he grew up amid the Reformation, when Protestant reformers stripped churches bare, wary of art’s power to distract. In the Calvinist Dutch Republic, painters like Rembrandt and Frans Hals turned instead to portraits, interiors, and landscapes, rendered in muted palettes of browns, greys, and whites. Their art reflected a sober, restrained spirituality.
The Catholic Church, by contrast, commissioned art to dazzle the senses and move the heart. This was the age of Caravaggio in Rome, Bernini’s sculptures that breathed life into stone, and Rubens in Antwerp — the most exuberant voice of them all. He created canvases that were not timid whispers of devotion, but thunderous symphonies of faith in colour and form.
Even the word Baroque tells the story. Derived from the Portuguese barroco, meaning an irregular pearl, it was once used mockingly to suggest excess and distortion. Yet today it names an art that revelled in movement, emotion, and splendour: twisting bodies, flowing drapery, glowing reds, blues, and golds, all designed to overwhelm the eye and stir devotion. But did it go too far?
Fr. Patrick concludes that both splendour and humility belong together in the life of faith. The grandeur of the Baroque and the restraint of Protestant art are not opposites but complements, just as the Gospel holds together the glory of the Transfiguration and the hidden life of Nazareth. Standing before Rubens’ paintings, we are reminded that Christian art must proclaim both majesty and humility — truth spoken not only in words, but also made visible through beauty.
I'm Father Patrick, founder of a website called christian.arts, and today we're in central London
at the Wallace Collection, one of my personal favourite museums, to step into the world of
Baroque art. We'll be looking at two paintings, Christ's Charge to Peter and the Holy Family with
Saints Elizabeth and John the Baptist, both completed in the 17th century by the Flemish
Both works are typical of the Baroque style, alive with drama and emotion, embodying the spirit of
the rage, the counter-reformation, a time when art fell in the midst of a theological and cultural
battle, a battle for grandeur, sensuality and mysticism. Baroque artists dared to push the very
limits of what sacred art could, or perhaps even what it should be. They experimented, they provoked,
they shocked, they inspired, but did they go too far? Let's find out. Today we're visiting the
Wallace Collection in the heart of London, which feels less like a gallery and more like a private
home, and that is because it once was. Originally the home of the Marquesses of Hertford, the house
and its treasures were left to the nation by Lady Wallace in 1897. Today its rooms still carry the
intimacy of a private collection, where grand furniture, exquisite objects and paintings
share the same space, just as they did in the 19th century. But of all the rooms, this is the grandest,
the great gallery. And here works by Titian, Velazquez, van Dyck, Frans Hals, all hang side by side.
And it's sort of fascinating to picture this room in its former life, hosting grand banquets and
events, where guests dined not only on fine food and wine, but also feasted their eyes on some of
the greatest painters of Western art. And taking centre stage on the far wall of the gallery are
two paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, Christ's Charge to Peter, and the Holy Family with Saint
Elizabeth and John the Baptist, hanging either side of a larger painting of the Annunciation
by Franco-Flemish painter Philippe de Champagne. So both of these panels are painted on oak, but the
first panel we look at here is the Holy Family, which we see in the top left corner, together with
Saint Elizabeth and Saint John the Baptist. And what we have here, first of all, is this wonderful
diagonal line from the top left to the bottom right. So all the figures are placed on this line,
and that's very typical for the Baroque. Again, this sort of dynamism, this movement. So in the
top left corner, we have Saint Joseph sort of leaning in to the scene that's taking place
below him, and then we have Mary looking at Elizabeth, and Elizabeth who's holding Saint John,
and then we have Christ. Christ is already sort of, even though he's a chubby child, so to speak,
he already has this quite sort of authoritarian pose. He speaks and he stands there with authority
pointing to Saint John the Baptist to say, you are my forerunner, and then after you, I come and I
have to fulfill my mission. Saint John the Baptist is depicted on this animal skin, again a foretelling
of him spending all this time in the desert. But what I like about this painting is that we
have the Holy Family there in a kind of sort of a triangular shape. They're all kept together.
So when we now move from this painting to the other painting, again it's painted on oak panel,
what we see here is a different line. So the painting there had this horizontal line. Here the
main characters are placed from the top right corner to the bottom left corner, and we see
Christ, the risen Christ, handing over the keys to Saint Peter, and Christ, whilst he is handing the
keys to Saint Peter, he's also pointing to the sheep, sort of saying, yes, I give you this authority
for governance of the church, but ultimately this is what it's about, the governance of souls
and the care of souls, my sheep. And when you look closely, there are two keys there. There's a black
key, which shows the authority of the Pope over earthly matters, and then the golden key, which
then is the key to the heavens. When you look at the Christ figure, this is the risen Christ, so we
have this wonderful sort of light touch of red on Christ's body, where his side was pierced, and
then we also have the mark of the nail in his hand. And I think it's just such a beautiful depiction
of Christ, because he has this sort of authority, yet this very gentleness in his gaze, and Rubens
painted this very light, sort of radiating light coming from the top of his head. And there we have
three of the disciples to the left of Jesus, and the pose of Saint Peter is a very humble
pose, where yes, he accepts his task to be leading the church, but he's very humble about it.
Rubens was born in 1577 and grew up in Antwerp in the midst of the Reformation. During this period,
iconoclasm spread throughout the continent, as some Protestant reformers sought to erase a culture
they saw as idolatrous, targeting images and artworks that, in their view, had turned Christianity
into a spectacle. In Northern Europe, in the newly established Calvinist Dutch Republic,
artists such as Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Jan van Goyen reflected the aesthetic principles of
Protestant reform. Their focus shifted towards interiors, portraits, landscapes, and scenes of
everyday life, rendered in a deliberately restrained palette of earthly browns, muted beiges,
soft greys, and whites, reflecting both the sobriety of Protestant culture and its desire
to move away from the ostentatious visual theater of the previous generations.
In the eyes of many Protestants, art had a real danger of distracting. Art was okay,
but only up to a point, and Protestant art, shaped by Reformation theology, tended to keep its focus
on just Christ himself, on his life, his passion, and his resurrection. So the images of saints or
any elaborate biblical scenes were often to be avoided, since they risked being seen as
distractions of the centrality of Christ and Scripture. By contrast, a counter-movement
began in the Catholic Church, one that commissioned artists to take the opposite path, favoring drama
and color designed to dazzle the senses, stir the emotions, and overwhelm the viewer with sheer
splendor. In this new Baroque world, three titans stood side by side. Caravaggio in Rome,
whose paintings were almost cinematic, Bernini, whose sculptures breathed life into stone,
and Rubens in Antwerp, the most exuberant voice of them all. Rubens embodied the Church's bold
and confident response against Reformation austerity, creating canvases that were not
timid whispers of devotion, but thunderous visual symphonies of faith. This was Baroque art.
The word Baroque comes from the Portuguese term barroco, and barroco means an irregularly shaped
pearl, and in the 17th and the 18th centuries, critics used it sort of mockingly. A Baroque
work of art was seen as overly ornate, irregular, even bizarre compared to the harmony and the
balance of Renaissance ideals that just came before. It's only in the 19th century that the
term Baroque became the accepted art historical term for the style of the 1600s. And we can
confidently call Rubens a Baroque painter, because his work embodies all the essential elements of
Baroque style. So what are these elements? First of all, dynamism and movement. The figures,
like in our paintings, are caught in motion, twisting torsos, extended arms, flowing drapery.
Two, the theatrical setting. Both of these paintings could almost be part of a theatre set.
Rubens favours strong diagonal and triangular groupings rather than calm horizontal and
vertical lines. And then the third characteristic of the Baroque is this emotional intensity.
Look at the gaze of Saint Elizabeth or at the humble face there of Saint Peter. The faces and
gestures of all the figures are highly expressive, inviting us as a viewer to feel the moment, not
just to observe it. And then lastly, we have these very rich colours, glowing flesh tones, sumptuous
reds, the bursting blues and golden highlights. Look at the reds of the disciple there, the reds
of Our Lady, the gold of the keys of Saint Peter, all these colours bursting to the fore, all there
to overwhelm the senses of the viewer and to then stir the heart. Whilst many admired the splendour
of Baroque art, not everyone approved. Artworks seeking to justify grandeur sometimes tipped into
audacious, ostentatious, overwhelming displays that shocked audiences. And it wasn't just Protestants
who were critical. Some Catholics too argued caution and restraint. Saint Charles Borromeo,
for example, would stress that whilst art could dazzle, ultimately it always needed to be at the
service of God and should inspire devotion rather than merely overwhelm the faithful.
Eventually, the movement gave way to the passage of time. Over a century after Rubens,
neoclassicism emerged in response to the frivolity and extravagance of the Baroque,
advocating a return to harmony, balance and classical ideals.
For me, both splendour and humility belong together in the life of faith. The Flemish
Baroque tradition, with its dramatic light and colour and persuasive beauty, draws the heart of
the viewer into an emotional encounter with scripture. Then, at the same time, Dutch Protestant
painting, with its clarity, simplicity and meditative stillness, invites us into a quieter
discipline of reflection and prayer. So far from being opposed, I see these two traditions
as beautifully complementing one another. For isn't it so that the Gospel itself holds both
grandeur and humility in tension? The glory of God and the humble life of Jesus,
his kingship and his carpenter's background. The dazzling light of the Transfiguration on top of
the mountain for everyone to be seen, but also Jesus' hidden life for 30 years in Nazareth
before he started his ministry. And that is what Christian art must still do today, to proclaim
both of these aspects. The splendour of God's majesty whilst never losing sight of the humility
of Christ's coming among us. And when I stand before the two paintings, I am reminded of a
time when art was bold, unapologetic and alive with conviction. When beauty itself became this
form of preaching. And I believe that we urgently need to reclaim that spirit today,
because I think we often focus too much as a church on talking with words and texts,
while often neglecting the importance of images and art. Proclaiming the Gospel deserves both
truth spoken with words, but also truth made visible through beauty.
Thank you very much for watching this video and I hope you really enjoyed our visit to the Wallace
Collection. And let us know what you think. Did Baroque art really go too far? So post your
comments below. And if you haven't already, head over to www.christian.art and sign up to receive
our daily email where I pair the Gospel reading of the day with a work of art
and write a short reflection, exploring beauty to grow closer to God.
