Peter Paul Rubens
2008/9 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Artists
Peter Paul Rubens ( June 28, 1577 – May 30, 1640) was a diplomat best remembered as 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.
Biography
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 was 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 Italy, settling in Mantua where he worked as a court painter to the duke 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.
In 1610 he moved into a new house and studio that he designed, which is now the Rubenshuis museum. It 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 in Antwerp. Rubens was a good friend and occasional collaborator of the Moretus family, owners of the large Plantin-Moretus publishing house.
His altarpieces The Raising of the Cross ( 1610) and The Descent from 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.
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.
Art
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.
Still, his art was much more diverse than this. He painted numerous portraits and self-portraits, religious paintings, as well as landscapes and historical pieces. He designed tapestries and houses.
Workshop
Rubens' paintings can be divided into three categories: those he painted himself, those which he painted in 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 these was Anthony Van Dyck. He also collaborated on some pieces with other, more specialized painters, like Jan Brueghel or Frans Snyders.
Painting for peace
The allegory of Peace and War ( 1629), in the National Gallery, London, 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 in Paris for an unknown amount. It had been mistakenly attributed to a follower of Rubens for centuries until art experts authenticated it.