Title: The Age of Rubens : diplomacy, dynastic politics and the visual arts in early seventeenth-century Europe /
Authors: Smuts, R. Malcolm; Duerloo, L.; Rubenianum,
Year: 2016
Subjects: Rubens, Peter Paul, Congresses.; Art Political aspects Europe History Congresses.; Art, European Themes, motives Congresses.; Art, Flemish Themes, motives Congresses.; Politics in art Congresses.
Abstract: This thoroughly interdisciplinary collection of essays explores the multi-faceted relationship between international politics, diplomacy and the visual arts that developed during the early seventeenth century. Several chapters provide major re-evaluations of the career of Peter Paul Rubens as an artistdiplomat, based on previously neglected manuscript sources and a deepened analysis of the social and political environments in which he operated. Other contributors focus on Rubens<U+2019>s contemporary court artists, such as Anthony van Dyck, Guido Reni and Diego Velázquez. In addition to providing original interpretations of several important paintings and painting cycles, the volume examines such topics as the evolution of personified images of nationality, representations of dynastic marriages, the material culture of royal bridal trousseaus, the importance of details of costume and colour to the visual codes of baroque courts, and the roles played by artists within court societies. Ranging across Western Europe, from England to the Low Countries, France, Germany, Spain and Italy, these essays demonstrate conclusively the subtlety and complexity of visual communication within early baroque court societies, which enabled artists to convey complex political messages through paintings. The contributors to this volume display a variety of methodological approaches, demonstrating many different ways in which historical research can be fruitfully integrated with art historical analysis to generate new insights into both the visual culture and the politics of baroque Europe. -- publisher's statement.
Contents: Occasio’s Lock of Hair : the artist and the ruler in pursuit of opportunity / Malcolm Smuts & Luc Duerloo -- Rubens and the spell of the Gonzaga Collections / Raffaella Morselli -- The representation of the French-Spanish marriage alliance in the ] ;Medici Cycle:‘Concorde perpetuelle’ / Nicola Courtright -- Rubens et l’invention d’une image politique : la France personnifiée, XVIe-XVIIe siècle / Jean-François Dubost -- High quality copies and the art of diplomacy during the Thirty Years War / Anthony Colantuono -- Ambition and ambivalence: Peter Paul Rubens as a diplomat / Michael Auwers -- Policy and pomegranates: art, iconography and counsel in Rubens’s Anglo-Spanish diplomacy of 1629‒1630 / John Adamson- Anthony van Dyck:a painter-diplomat of the Thirty Years’ War? / Toby Osborne --The materials of marital diplomacy: Henrietta Maria’s trousseau / Erin Griffey -- The representational strategies of the Count-Duke of Olivares and Elisabeth of France: equestrian portraits, Guardainfantes and miniatures (1628‒1644) / Laura Oliván Santaliestra -- Rubens’s myths for the Rey Planeta at the Torre de la Parada / Larry Silver -- Rubens allemand ? Le duo formé par Georg Petel et Rubens / Blaise Ducos -- Rubens, Bishop Veit Adam von Gepeckh, and the Freising High Altar, 1623‒1625 / Jeffrey Chipps Smit.