Adoration of the Magi (Rubens, Madrid)

Hopes were high for the talks and for the renewed economic prosperity that peace or a truce would bring - Antwerp was a major commercial centre and it was in crisis due to the Dutch blockade of the city.

There is a sketch for the work in Groninger Museum in Groningen,[2] as well as several preparatory studies, including Head of a black Magus (private collection, London), a Portrait of a bearded man (Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Palazzo Corsini alla Lungara, Rome[3]) and others in the Museum Boymans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.

In spring 1612 Rodrigo Calderón, a confidant of the duque de Lerma, came to the Spanish Netherlands as an extraordinary ambassador of the king of Spain, presumably with the task of converting the truce into a permanent peace treaty.

Francisco Pacheco relates in his work El arte de la pintura "[Rubens] changed some things in his painting of the Adoration of the Magi that was in the palace".

The painting became very popular within the Spanish royal collection and when Maria Anna of Neuburg suggested sending it to Germany as a gift to her father Philip William, Elector Palatine, she was vetoed by her husband Charles II of Spain.