Massacre of the Innocents
c. 1611–1612 · Oil on panel · Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
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This print

About this work
- Artist
- Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640)
- Year
- c. 1611–1612
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Original size
- 142 × 182 cm
- Collection
- Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
- Movement
- Baroque
Herod's soldiers tear infants from their mothers in a courtyard, the women fighting back with nails and teeth, in the episode from the Gospel of Matthew that Rubens painted on a panel around 1611 to 1612, soon after returning to Antwerp from eight years in Italy. It is the first of his two versions; the later one, from the 1630s, is in Munich. The picture entered the Liechtenstein collection in Vienna around 1700 alongside Samson and Delilah, was reattributed to an assistant in 1780 and forgotten, and spent decades on loan to an Austrian monastery under the name of another painter. In 2001 a Sotheby's specialist recognised Rubens's hand, and in July 2002 it sold in London for 49.5 million pounds to Kenneth Thomson, then the highest price ever paid for an Old Master. Thomson gave it to the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, where it has hung since 2008.
This print reproduces the whole work, uncropped, from a high-resolution scan of the original. The original is in the public domain.
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About this design
The Madten promise
An exhibition poster
The same artwork as a gallery exhibition poster — title, artist & date typeset beneath the image on a soft ground.
The full-bleed edition
The painting printed edge-to-edge at its own proportions, filling the whole sheet — and available on gallery-wrapped canvas.




















