In Antwerp. 501 Cathedral of Antwerp. It is needless to describe the subject. It is a large scene of high character, in which we find a nobler conception and more finished execution than usual, besides calmness in the midst of energetic move- ment, and also, in this instance, no less grandeur than fire and energy. The merits of the work are much increased by its perfect unity. On the wings are the Visitation and S. Simon. Of the other pictures by Rubens at Antwerp we must mention the Raising of the Cross, the pendent of the Descent; a vast Assumption of the Virgin, placed over the high altar in the same cathedral, the colouring of which is magnifi- cent ; besides the eighteen pictures in the Museum, amongst which may be found a Last Communion of S. Francis, unsurpassed, perhaps, by any other work of Rubens. In the Pinakothek at Munich are nearly a hundred pictures by him : of these the principal are a Last Judgment ; the Battle of the Amazons ; Castor and Pollux carrying off the daughters of Leucippus ; Children carrying flowers ; and several portraits of himself and his two wives. The Belvedere, Vienna, possesses a Portrait of Helena Fourment ; a Festival of Venus ; an Assumption ; Ignatius Loyola curing a demoniac; and its companion, Francisco Xavier preaching to the Indians ; the Four Quarters of the Globe ; S. Ambrose refusing to alloiv the Emperor Theodosius to enter the Cathedral of Milan (of which a copy by Van Dyck is in the National Gallery) (Fig. 164) ; and one of his best pictures, the Appearance of the Virgin to S. Ildefonso. In the Liechtenstein Gallery at Vienna are the well-known pictures of his Two Sons, and a series illustrating the History of Decius. There are forty-three of Rubens's paintings in the Louvre :
