Fire at Rubens’s St. Charles Borromeo

An electrical fire has done severe damage to the interior of Antwerp’s St. Charles Borromeo. Rubens designed the resplendent facade of the church, a masterpiece of baroque form, and some of its other architectural elements. A cycle of 32-paintings for the church, one of his great early commissions, was destroyed in an earlier fire, in the 18th century. Reports indicate that the many remaining art works in the church were not badly harmed, but news video shows the church filled with smoke. A major disaster.