Around 1625, the Infanta Clara Eugenia, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, commissioned Rubens to produce a series of twenty tapestries for the convent of the Descalzas Reales in Madrid, where they are all still to be found. All Rubens’s designs, painted on panel, focus on the theme of the Eucharist, the principal dogma of Catholicism which the Infanta promoted. Rubens produced various preparatory oil sketches for this series that can be considered among his finest works of this type, revealing his characteristic expressivity and vitality and his profound knowledge of classical and Renaissance works of art.The Prado’s collection includes six of the panels that Rubens produced in preparation for this project. These large-scale oil sketches, known as modelli, were used by the artist as the basis for the large cartoons on which the tapestries (woven in silk and wool in Brussels) were based. Four of the tapestries, which are among the finest produced in Europe in the Baroque period, can also be seen in the exhibition.