Peter Paul Rubens
Pieter Pauwel (Peter Paul) Rubens (
June 28,
1577 –
May 30,
1640) was the most popular and prolific
Flemish and European painter of the
17th century. He was the proponent of an exuberant
Baroque style which emphasized movement, colour, and sensuality.
Rubens was born in
Siegen,
Westphalia to a successful
Protestant lawyer who had fled
Antwerp to escape religious persecution. In
1589, two years after his father's death, Rubens and his mother returned to Antwerp, where he had himself baptized a
Catholic. Religion figured prominently in much of his later work. In Antwerp, his mother apprenticed Rubens to leading painters of the time like
Adam Van Noort and
Otto Venius.
In
1600 he went to
Venice,
Italy, where he worked as a
court painter to the duke of
Mantua,
Vincenzo I of Gonzaga. He studied ancient Roman art and learned by copying the works of the Italian masters. His mature style was profoundly influenced by
Titian.
In
1603 and
1604, he worked as a diplomat in Spain, combining art and diplomacy as he would throughout his career.
Upon the death of his mother in
1608, Rubens returned to Antwerp. A year later he married Isabella Brant, daughter of Jan Brant, a leading Antwerp humanist. He was appointed court painter by
Albert and
Isabella, the governors of the
Low Countries.
He moved in
1610 to the
Rubenshuis, a house in Antwerp that he designed for himself and which is now a museum. This house also contained his workshop where he and his apprentices made most of the paintings, his art collection, and his library, which was one of the most extensive of Antwerp. Rubens was a good friend and occasional collaborator of the family
Moretus, owners of the large
Plantin-Moretus publishing house.
His altarpieces
The Raising of the Cross (
1610) and
The Descent of the Cross (
1611–
1614) for the
Cathedral of Our Lady established Rubens as Flanders' leading painter.
He received numerous commissions from the French court, including a series of allegorical paintings on the life of
Marie de' Medici (now in the
Louvre). He and his workshop executed many monumental religious paintings, such as the
Assumption of the Virgin Mary in the Cathedral of Antwerp. The young
Anthony van Dyck was one of the assistants in Rubens' studio.
In the period between
1621 and
1630, the Spanish
Habsburg rulers entrusted Rubens with a number of diplomatic missions.
Charles I of England knighted him for his diplomatic efforts to bring about a peace treaty between England and
Spain. He was also commissioned to paint the ceiling of the
Banqueting House at the
Palace of Whitehall.
 |
Hélène Fourment with two of her children, c. 1636. |
In
1630, four years after the death of his first wife, the 53-year-old painter married 16-year-old
Hélène Fourment. Rubens had three children with Isabella and five with Hélène; his youngest child was born eight months after his death. Hélène's charms recur in later works such as
The Garden of Love,
The Three Graces and
The Judgment of Paris, painted for the Spanish court and now in the
Prado.
Rubens died of
gout at age 63 and was interred in Saint Jacob's church, Antwerp.
As many of his paintings feature full-figured, voluptuous women, the word "
Rubenesque" (meaning plump or fleshy, yet not "fat," and used exclusively to describe women) is derived from his last name.[
1]
Still, his art was much more diverse than this. He has painted numerous portraits and selfportraits, religious paintings, but also landscapes and historical pieces. He has designed tapestries and houses.
Workshop
Rubens' paintings can be divided into three categories: those he painted himself, those where he painted part (mainly hands and faces), and those he only supervised. He had,as was usual at the time, a large workshop with many apprentices, some of whom became famous in their own right. The best known of those was
Anthony Van Dyck. He also collaborated on some pieces with other, more specialized painters, like
Jan Brueghel or
Frans Snyders.
Painting for peace
|
Rubens is famed for the frenetic energy and lusty ebullience of his paintings, as typified by the Hippopotamus Hunt (1616). |
His picture in the
National Gallery, London,
The Allegory of Peace and War [
2] (
1629), reflects, and even illustrates, his strong concern for peace. It was given to
Charles I and helped to create a peace treaty between
London and
Madrid. He visited the Netherlands, which was "enemy territory," partly to meet Dutch artists and partly to seek political reconciliation. There he encountered the attitude that courtiers should not use their hands in any art or trade. But because he was such a fine artist,
Philip IV and Charles I both enjoyed his company as well as his art.
Value
At a
Sotheby's auction on
July 10,
2002, Rubens' newly discovered painting
Massacre of the Innocents sold for £49.5million (
$76.2 million) to
Lord Thomson. It is a current record for an
Old Master painting.
Recently in 2006, however, another lost masterpiece by Rubens,
The Calydonian Boar Hunt, dating to 1611 or 1612, was sold to the Getty Collection for an unknown amount in Paris. It had been mistakenly attributed to a follower of Reubens for centuries until art experts authenticated it.[
3] [
4]
*His altarpieces
The Elevation of the Cross (
1610) and
The Descent of the Cross (
1611–
1614) for the
Cathedral of Our Lady established Rubens as Flanders' leading painter.
*
Marie de' MediciAssumption of the Virgin Mary
**Hippopotamus Hunt'' (1616)
*
Massacre of the Innocents*
The Calydonian Boar Hunt (1611/1612)
The Garden of Love (
Spanish Wikipedia,
German Wikipedia,
Italian Wikipedia),
The Three Graces (
Spanish Wikipedia) and
The Judgment of Paris, were painted for the Spanish court and now in the
Prado.
* Alpers, Svetlana, The Making of Rubens. New Haven 1995.
*
Heinen, Ulrich, Rubens zwischen Predigt und Kunst. Weimar 1996.
* Belkin, Kristin Lohse, Rubens. London 1998.
* Büttner, Nils, Herr P. P. Rubens. Göttingen 2006.
*
Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard. An Illustrated Catalogue Raisonne of the Work of Peter Paul Rubens Based on the Material Assembled by the Late Dr. Ludwig Burchard in Twenty-Seven Parts, Edited by the Nationaal Centrum Voor de Plastische Kunsten Van de XVI en de XVII EEUW.
*
List of Flemish painters*
a painting selection of Paul Rubens*
National Gallery: Rubens*
Olga's Galery: Rubens*
The Guardian: Rubens* At the exhibition
Drawings by Peter Paul Rubens in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) of New-York 115 drawings of Pieter-Paul Rubens were on display in April 2005.
http://www.metmuseum.org/*
The Allegory of Peace and War*
The Virgin and Child with St Elizabeth and the Child Baptist 1630-35*
Rubenshuis in Antwerp, Belgium is the former house of Rubens, now converted into a museum.
*
Web Gallery of Peter Paul Rubens*
Location of Rubens' work in the world*
High resolution Rubens Wallpapers
