The Massacre of the Innocents by Peter Paul Ruben.
Ruben is one of my most admired figurative painters. His classical style and rendering of the human form in such an idealized form is… great for lack of vocabulary. The way he paints the figures in such a beautiful organic form which moves the viewer through the painting, molding gracefully form and form/ contour to contour. To allow division and visual break between figures Ruben places geometric form in rigid framework of architecture to mirror a balance and comparison in structure and form. Subject matter as well though, appropriate for the time to the extent of religious ideas it is still emotionally jarring.
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