In Rubens’ lifetime, standard sizes of panels for paintings mattered much. In the Ordinance of 11 December 1617[1] issued to the panel makers of Guild of Saint Luke (of which Rubens was a free master) and the Joiner’s Guild by the City of Antwerp  several standard sizes are mentioned.

In descending order of value and dimensions these were[2]: the 26 pennies size, the guilder’s size (20 pennies), the 8 pennies size , the “stooter” (3 pennies) and the half-stooter”. Article 7 of the Ordinance stipulated that reference-panels of those standard sizes should be kept at the chamber of the guild so that panels would always be made according these standard sizes. The requirement for the quality of the panels was handled at the same level of scrutiny.  The wood had to be dried sufficientlty; with right angles and even thickness at the borders (vier in Flemish); being free of sapwood (spek in Flemish); as well of the larvae of either those wood-boring beetles that infested the not yet dried wood (red worm) or the dried wood (white worm); whitewashed correctly (i.e. having a state of the art preparation layer) and, last but not least, bearing the mark of the panelmaker. Only then could the deans of the panel makers in the Guild brand the City of Antwerp quality marks on the reverse of the panels by way of approving their quality.

Regulatory measures were much needed because the temptation to commit fraud with panels of lower quality was significant. In fact such fraud was very profitable because painting panels of first quality Baltic oak were very expensive: up to eight times the price of canvasses of the same size. Also, archival references show that unpainted panels could represent a substantial percentage of the social capital of a painters studio.[3] The stakes were that high that this panel control was done daily by the deans of the panel makers: article 11 of the ordinance foresaw financial compensation for them in proportion to the standard sizes inspected, because being daily available for that task distracted the deans from other tasks.

The growing use of standardized sizes can be explained by the growing proportion on the Antwerp art market of non customised mass production. The term that the ordinance is using for these standard sizes is telling in that respect: “dosynwerck” [4] i.e. made in series of twelve, with twelve being itself tributary to a measuring system that would only turn decimal from the French Revolution onwards. Ideally, the panel maker had also to present his panels for inspection by the dozens to the dean. Such mass production intensified from the sixteenth century onwards when the city became one of the most thriving economic centres in Europe comparable only to Venice. This economic boom was not only made possible by the internationalisation of trade after the discovery of other continents, but also by easing trade restrictions. In the field of art dealing, potential buyers did not have to wait any more for the yearly market to find paintings by artists from the city and outside the city. And to buy artworks ‘on spec’– i.e. open to visual inspection by everyone in view of a possible acquisition after being already made and in stock, instead of being pre-ordered in accordance with customised pre-requirements like specific dimensions. In other words we see how a supply-driven market is complementing more and more a demand-driven market. And this evolution was facilitated and promoted by putting specific buildings with stalls (panden in Flemish) at the disposal of artists and art dealers.[5] Those were open during the whole year and not only once a year during the city’s year market as in older times.

As a court painter, Rubens was not restricted by the regulations of the Guild of Saint Luke. But the panel makers who delivered panels to Rubens had certainly to respect the abovementioned rules of their own guild or face severe financial penalties.[6] Although this may seem contradictory at first sight, both circumstances make the question of standard sizes relevant to Rubens’ panel paintings of landscapes.

Rubens painted landscapes during several periods of his career. But it is common knowledge that their nature and position on the market was changing after he acquired his own estate in the 1630’s and retired there more frequenty from the noise and stress of the city of Antwerp. To own an estate (a seigniory) was one of the three preconditions to obtain noble rank, together with the title being conferred by the sovereign by letter patent and the fact to belong to the leisure class i.e. not to have to earn a living by the work of one’s hands. In that way Rubens became ‘toparchus’ or Lord of the Steen (as marked on his tombstone in the Antwerp St James’s church). In this quality, Rubens was painting more and more, not on order but on his own initiative and for his own pleasure. That landscapes were a topic of predeliction for Rubens in that period is not merely a matter of opportunity, him seeing more landscape immediately around his estate and of him loving the marvels of nature: it is also engrained in the same logic of noble standing. Although at that time affluence was already more gained by trade and commercial activities than by the ownership of land, Rubens was continuously expanding his landownership from early on. [7] The status of the nobility was from old times based on having a castle or estate with land and tenants. Who since in feudal times could form a militia whith which a vassal could support his sovereign in battle.Therefore land ownership must have represented for Rubens – like for many other wealthy higher middle-class of his time with their country houses (or maisons de plaisance[8]) – also a symbolic connotation with the nobility class – and thus with not having to earn a living by the work of one’s hands i.e. by selling paintings on order.[9]

That category of panel paintings, not made on order and not being destined to the art market and its economic logic of value for money, could be produced without the strict rules and quality requirements of the 11 December 1617 ordinance without fear of complaints of the client – and not just because of Rubens’ exemption of the painters guild rules as court painter.

We know for sure that Rubens followed that logic since Pascale Fraiture and Hélène Dubois discovered that some paintings made for his intimate circle and thus outside the commercial circuit were painted on wood of second rate quality.[10] On the other hand, because the 11 December 1617 ordinance linked panel makers marks and quality branding to standard sizes, those were the sort of panels that should be used by Rubens for his panel paintings on order.

We also discovered that Rubens must have been well aware of the importance of size and the rhetoric of standard sizes.[11] This is clear from his correspondence with Sir Dudley Carleton of 29 April 1618. Rubens and Carleton agreed that only paintings of a certain size were worthy of a courtly patron.[12] And in making his version of a composition by Elsheimer on a standard size,  on a standard size quite bigger, he followed the rhetoric principle of emulating a seminal picture of his colleague by way of “amplificatio”, making it bigger both in the literal, figurative and commercial sense.[13] And we know that Rubens sawed bigger panels to make smaller ones and was responsible for enlarging panels in a way that did not respect the professional rules and practices of professional panel makers, causing problems of conservation up to this day.[14]

Last but not least, painting landscapes on such a big scale gives them the status that was reserved earlier on for the lofty genre of history painting, illustrating stories from the Bible, Antiquity or the personifications of abstract ideas by means of allegories. In Flemish painting, Pieter Bruegel the Elder gave landscapes already a bigger status in the literal and figurarive sense in his series of The Twelve Months, just by scaling up their size to that of history paintings: both his Twelve Months and his Bearing of the Cross in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna are painted on oak panels with sizes near to that of the “dobbelen doek” (double canvas) (c. 135 x 170 cm): c. 115 x 163 cm and 124 x 170 cm respectively. But those were still smaller than the biggest Antwerp standard size of the “twice double canvas” (twee dobbelen doeck) of 207 x 166.5 cm.[15] Therefore it is relevant to analyse if Rubens emulates even the biggest standard size in his landscapes paintings and in which context.

Most importantly, these historic insights on standard sizes and their consequences can guide us towards specific research questions for the project:

Joost Vander Auwera

[1] Moortgat, Ingrid. “Joiner’s ordinance (11 December 1617)” In Jordaens Van Dyck Panel Paintings Project. Edited by Joost Vander Auwera and Justin Davies. Jordaensvandyck.org/archive/joiners-ordinance -11-december-1617 (accessed 3 October 2026)

[2] Bruyn, J., Een onderzoek naar 17de eeuwse schilderijenformaten, voornamelijk in Noord-Nederland/ A Study of Sizes of 17th-century Paintings Mainly in the North Netherlands, in Oud Holland, Jaargang/Volume 93 – 1979 Nr. 2., pp.96-115.

Bruyn was criticized, especially on statistic grounds on the existence of such standard categories of size, their proportions of hight versus width and their identification by those names by H. Miedema, Verder onderzoek naar zeventiende-eeuwse schilderijen-formaten in Noord-Nederland./Further research into 17th-century picture sizes in the North Netherlands, in Oud Holland, Jaargang/Volume 95 – 1981 Nr.1., pp. 31-49. But in the end, Miedema admitted that his results also suffered from statistic reliability. Moreover, archival documents from the time show that the names and use of these standard sizes were well known and understood during the seventeenth century.

[3] See J. Vander Auwera, Jacques Jordaens and his use of panels: an introduction’, in Jordaens Van Dyck Journal, Issue 1 (July 2021) , pp. 43 ss. Online in open access on www.jordaensvandyck.org/journal/

[4] Later on, the term “dosynwerck” became the name of cheap history paintings  – which is not the case here in view of the expensive oak panels with quality brandings mentioned in this ordinance. For their cheap counterparts see Angela Jager, ‘Galey-schilders’ en ‘dosijnwerck’: De productie, distributie en consumptie van goedkope historiestukken in zeventiende-eeuws Amsterdam, Amsterdam 2016. With thanks to Dr. Oliver Kik for providing the reference to Jager.

[5] Filip Vermeylen, Painting for the Market. Commercialization of Art in Antwerp’s Golden Age, Turnhout, 2003.

[6] I am grateful to Justin Davies for supplying these considerations from his research into Rubens and Van Dyck panels.

[7] Nils Büttner, Herr P. P. Rubens. Von der Kunst, berühmt zu werden. Göttingen, 2006. See also Idem, Peter Paul Rubens: Eine Biographie. Regensburg, 2015.

[8] See P. Janssens, ‘Portraits de châteaux brabançons, XVe – XVIIIe siècles’, in (cat; exh.), Le peintre et ‘arpenteur. Images de Bruxelles et de l’ancien duché de Brabant, Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, 2000, pp. 59 – 66

[9] As is well known, from a letter to Peiresc of 18 december 1634, Rubens’s choice of his second wife Hélène Fourment was also motivated by his intention to avoid marrying a noble spouse who would be ashamed by the painting brushes in his hands.

[10] Cfr. P. Fraiture & H. Dubois, cat; 7-8 and my cat. 34 in (cat.exh.), Rubens. L’atelier du génie. Autour des oeuvres du maître aux Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, 2000 with reference to a remark by the late Arnout Balis. Moreover, H. Dubois & Natasja Peeters, ‘Les scènes mythologiques de la Torre de la Parada’, in pp. 250 – 252, in the same exhibition catalogue, point to the fact that Rubens used also panels of a second rate quality for his sketches fort he Torre de la Parada. Those were also destined for the inner circle i.e. of the artists he subcontracted to elaborate his small sketchy compositions onto the far bigger scale of the final paintings in that hunting lodge of the Spanish King.

[11] J. Vander Auwera, ‘Size matters! On the Importance and Significance of Life-Size figures in Ruben’s Paintings’, in Cordula von Wyhe (ed.), Rubens and the Human Body, (The Body in Art, series dir. Susanna Caviglia), (Turnhout, 2018), pp. 129-155, especially pp. 148-148. For ‘amplificatio’ in action with Jordaens according to the same logic, see J. Vander Auwera, ‘Jordaens’s re-use and enlargement of panels in light of the studio practices and art theory of his day: The Adoration of the Shepherds in Bristol’, in Jordaens Van Dyck Journal, Issue 2, December 2021, pp. 70-83. Online in open access on www.jordaensvandyck.org/journal/

[12] Ibidem, pp. 130 and 150.

[13] Ibidem., p. 154. Adam Elsheimer’s The Rest on the Flight into Egypt of 1609 in the Alte Pinakothek Münich is oil on copper, 31 x 41 cm (the standard measure of ‘kleyne stoter’); whereas Rubens’ version in the Louvre , oil on canvas 74 x 105 cm is on the standard measure of ‘26 stuivers maat’ (26 pennies size). These examples also illustrate the fact that these standard sizes were used for supports in different materials.

I first articulated this rhetorical logic of format in a lecture: Size and value. Formats as mediators of commercial, rhetorical and artistic values, especially in easel paintings in Early Modern Times , Workshop Mapping Markets in Paintings 1450-1850. eds. prof. dr. Hans Van Miegroet en prof. dr. Neil de Marchi (Duke University U.S.A.) with financial support of the Luce Foundation (U.S.A.), Historians of Netherlandish Art (HNA) Conference, Antwerpen, Elzenveld, 16.03.2002

[14] Cfr. supra, note 10. The clumsy gluing of panel parcels counterwise to the grain of the wood still causes conservation problems with the Torre de la Parada oil sketches at the Brussels museum.

[15] For this biggest standard size of canvas, see J. Bruyn, 1979, footnote 8.