Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641): Paintings | Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641): Paintings See works of art Works of Art (18) Essay Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, the greatest Flemish artists of the seventeenth century, were prominent figures on an international stage, namely that of the Catholic church and the royal courts and commercial centers of Europe. As a painter of religious pictures, mythological scenes, classical and modern history, and portraits, Rubens had a broader impact than van Dyck. But as a portraitist , van Dyck was far more influential, especially in England, where he spent most of the 1630s and his works inspired artists for the next 150 years (Thomas Gainsborough [ 20.155.1 ] was his most gifted admirer).

Van Dyck was also a highly expressive painter of religious themes and, as a draftsman , a sensitive landscapist, although in the latter field Rubens surpassed every other Flemish painter (A Forest at Dawn with a Deer Hunt [ 1990.196 ] is one of a few dozen landscapes Rubens painted mainly for his own pleasure.) Van Dyck’s reputation as a portraitist was enhanced by his large series of etchings called the Iconography. Not a printmaker but an astute entrepreneur, Rubens supervised the reproduction of his compositions in hundreds of engravings . In contrast to the teenaged prodigy Van Dyck, who was about twenty-one when he painted the self-portrait illustrated here ( 49.7.25 ), Rubens did not develop quickly as an artist. In his early years, he received an exceptional education, experience as a page in a noble house, and training in the studios of three Antwerp painters, most importantly that of Otto van Veen, who probably encouraged Rubens’s trip to Italy in 1600.

Here he absorbed profound impressions from classical sculpture and the works of Italian artists such as Raphael, Leonardo , Michelangelo, Correggio, Tintoretto, Caravaggio , and Annibale Carracci . Rubens remained in Italy for eight years, supported by commissions from the duke of Mantua, Genoese nobility, and great Roman patrons, including major orders of the Catholic church. Before the end of 1608, when he returned to Antwerp, he had painted some of the most important altarpieces in Genoa, Rome, and elsewhere in Italy. This experience provided the groundwork for his extraordinary output of religious pictures during the next fifteen years in Antwerp, which he managed by organizing a large workshop of pupils and assistants. Rubens was appointed court painter to Archduke Albert and Archduchess Isabella, who governed the Southern Netherlands from Brussels on behalf of Spain. However, the artist chose to remain in Antwerp, where he married and built a house and large studio in a Northern version of the modern Italian style.

The altarpieces he supplied to Antwerp churches—like the two great triptychs now in the Antwerp Cathedral, The Raising of the Cross and The Descent from the Cross—were often funded by distinguished laymen with a discerning knowledge of the arts, such as the burgomaster Nicolaes Rockox. The Wolf and Fox Hunt of about 1615–21 ( 10.73 ) is the first of several large hunting pictures that Rubens made as alternatives to tapestries and sold to patrons like the duke of Bavaria. He also collaborated with other Antwerp artists, for instance, Jan Brueghel the Elder ( 45.141 ) and Frans Snyders, to produce mythological and other pictures intended mainly for connoisseurs. In all of these works—religious paintings, tapestry designs , book illustrations, and other projects—Rubens exhibited extraordinary learning and imagination. Among the many examples of his insightfully conceived iconographic programs was the spectacular series of thirty-nine ceiling paintings for the Jesuit Church in Antwerp.

The canvases (later destroyed in a fire) were actually painted mostly by Van Dyck, after Rubens’s oil sketches, his preferred method of formulating compositions. These modelli (models), fluid studies in oil paint on comparatively small wooden panels, were used both as proposals to patrons and as guides for assistants. One of the few hundred known examples is The Triumph of Henry IV of about 1630 ( 42.187 ), the last of four oil sketches for a monumental canvas now in the Uffizi, Florence. The painting was part of a large cycle of canvases, never completed, that would have decorated the Luxembourg Palace in Paris. The pendant cycle of twenty-four paintings depicting the life of Maria de’ Medici (Louvre, Paris) was installed in the palace in 1625. In the later 1620s, the demands of Rubens’s international clientele and his role in peace negotiations between England and Spain made him the “most harassed man in the world” (as he complained in his extensive correspondence).

He spent seven months in Madrid in 1628–29, where he portrayed the royal family and made copies after Titian , and nine months in London in 1629–30 (the ceiling paintings of the Banqueting House at Whitehall, London, were completed in Antwerp by 1634). In 1630, Rubens remarried ( 1981.238 ) and in the next few years organized his studio to work efficiently in his absence; large-scale projects such as the decoration of the Torre de la Parada (Philip IV’s hunting lodge near Madrid) and the decorative scheme for the triumphal entry into Antwerp of the new governor, Cardinal Infante Ferdinand, were executed almost entirely by assistants and collaborators following the master’s designs. However, numerous landscapes, unofficial portraits, and other pictures were painted entirely by Rubens during this period, either in Antwerp or at his country estate of Steen (purchased in 1635).

He died in 1640, leaving behind five children, an impressive art collection, and a body of work that profoundly influenced artists—including Watteau , Boucher , Fragonard , Reynolds, Géricault, and Delacroix—for more than two centuries. The first important painters to respond to Rubens’s work were Jacob Jordaens and Van Dyck in Antwerp. Both artists adopted Rubens’s practice of painting studies of live models (usually in bust-length) for later use as characters in religious pictures. (Van Dyck’s Study Head of a Young Woman of about 1618–20 [ 57.37 ] may have become a repentant Magdalen or mourning Virgin, although no precise use is known.) Van Dyck began training as a painter under Hendrick van Balen the Elder at the age of ten; he already had his own studio and pupil when he joined the painters’ guild in 1618.

By the fall of 1620, the young painter of portraits and religious pictures was in the service of King James I of England, but in 1621 he returned to Antwerp and then departed for Italy, where he remained until late 1627. While there, he painted grand portraits of Genoese aristocrats and numerous other distinguished figures ( 14.40.619 ). He also studied antiquity and Italian painters, concentrating—far more than Rubens had—on the single model of Titian. The latter’s influence is evident in Virgin and Child with Saint Catherine of Alexandria ( 60.71.5 ), which dates from the artist’s “second Antwerp period” of 1628–32. Most of Van Dyck’s remaining years were spent in England, where he was knighted by Charles I and effectively created the enduring image of the Stuart court ( 89.15.16 ). Van Dyck’s brilliant brushwork, graceful arrangement of elegant figures, and seemingly effortless displays of luxurious drapery occasionally make him appear a more superficial master than Rubens.

A fair number of the later English portraits , which are often largely by assistants, support this view. However, the lasting importance of direct observation in Van Dyck’s art is clear in both the style and character of his autograph portraits. Similarly, a sincere emotionalism lends substance to the seemingly nervous manner of his religious pictures. Perhaps only a temperamental prodigy with astonishing natural talent could learn so much from Rubens and at the same time become a great master of a very different kind. Walter Liedtke Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art October 2003 Citation Liedtke, Walter. “Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641): Paintings.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. (October 2003) Further Reading Belkin, Kristin Lohse. Rubens. London: Phaiden, 1998. Liedtke, Walter A. Flemish Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984. See on MetPublications Sutton, Peter C., et al. The Age of Rubens. Exhibition catalogue. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1993. Vlieghe, Hans. Flemish Art and Architecture, 1585–1700. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr., et al. Anthony van Dyck. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Abrams, 1990. Additional Essays by Walter Liedtke Peter Paul Rubens ~ Baroque Era painter | Tutt'Art@ | Pittura * Scultura * Poesia * Musica | Peter Paul Rubens ~ Baroque Era painter Pubblicato da maria laterza Art Styles and Categories: 17th century Art , Baroque Era style , Flemish Artist , Renaissance Art Movement Sir Pieter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color and sensuality.

He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp which produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, king of Spain, and Charles I, king of England. Peter Paul Rubens Biography Peter Paul Rubens Biography Self portrait Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 - May 30, 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp which produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, king of Spain, and Charles I, king of England.

Early life Rubens was born in Siegen, Westphalia, to Jan Rubens and Maria Pypelincks. His father, a Calvinist, and mother fled Antwerp for Cologne in 1568, after increased religious turmoil and persecution of Protestants during the rule of the Spanish Netherlands by the Duke of Alba. Jan Rubens became the legal advisor (and lover) to Anna of Saxony, the second wife of William I of Orange, and settled at her court in Siegen in 1570. Following imprisonment for the affair, Peter Paul Rubens was born in 1577. The family returned to Cologne the next year. In 1589, two years after his father's death, Rubens moved with his mother to Antwerp, where he was raised Catholic. Religion figured prominently in much of his work and Rubens later became one of the leading voices of the Catholic Counter-Reformation style of painting. In Antwerp, Rubens received a humanist education, studying Latin and classical literature. By fourteen he began his artistic apprenticeship with Tobias Verhaeght.

Subsequently, he studied under two of the city's leading painters of the time, the late mannerists Adam van Noort and Otto van Veen. Much of his earliest training involved copying earlier artists' works, such as woodcuts by Hans Holbein the Younger and Marcantonio Raimondi's engravings after Raphael. Rubens completed his education in 1598, at which time he entered the Guild of St. Luke as an independent master. Italy (1600-1608) Laocoon And His Sons In 1600, Rubens traveled to Italy. He stopped first in Venice, where he saw paintings by Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto, before settling in Mantua at the court of duke Vincenzo I of Gonzaga. The coloring and compositions of Veronese and Tintoretto had an immediate effect on Rubens's painting, and his later, mature style was profoundly influenced by Titian. With financial support from the duke, Rubens traveled to Rome by way of Florence in 1601. There, he studied classical Greek and Roman art and copied works of the Italian masters.

The Hellenistic sculpture Laocoon and his Sons was especially influential on him, as was the art of Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci. He was also influenced by the recent, highly naturalistic paintings by Caravaggio. He later made a copy of that artist's Entombment of Christ, recommended that his patron, the duke of Mantua, purchase The Death of the Virgin (Louvre), and was instrumental in the acquisition of The Madonna of the Rosary (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) for the Dominican church in Antwerp. During this first stay in Rome, Rubens completed his first altarpiece commission, St. Helena with the True Cross for the Roman church, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. Rubens traveled to Spain on a diplomatic mission in 1603, delivering gifts from the Gonzagas to the court of Philip III. While there, he viewed the extensive collections of Raphael and Titian that had been collected by Philip II. He also painted an equestrian portrait of the Duke of Lerma during his stay (Prado, Madrid) that demonstrates the influence of works like Titian's Charles V at Muhlberg (1548; Prado, Madrid).

This journey marks the first of many during his career that would combine art and diplomacy. He returned to Italy in 1604, where he remained for the next four years-first in Mantua, and then in Genoa and Rome. In Genoa, Rubens painted numerous portraits, such as the Marchesa Brigida Spinola-Doria (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), in a style that would influence later paintings by Anthony van Dyck, Joshua Reynolds, and Thomas Gainsborough. He also began a book illustrating the palaces in the city. From 1606 to 1608, he was largely in Rome. During this period Rubens received his most important commission to date for the high altar of the city's most fashionable new church, Santa Maria in Vallicella (or, Chiesa Nuova). The subject was to be St. Gregory the Great and important local saints adoring an icon of the Virgin and Child.

The first version, a single canvas (Musee des Beaux-Arts, Grenoble), was immediately replaced by a second version on three slate panels that permits the actual miraculous holy image of the "Santa Maria in Vallicella" to be revealed on important feast days by a removable copper cover, also painted by the artist. The impact of Italy on Rubens was great. Besides the artistic influences, he continued to write many of his letters and correspondences in Italian for the rest of his life, signed his name as "Pietro Paolo Rubens", and spoke longingly of returning to the peninsula-a hope that never materialized. Antwerp (1609-1621) Prometheus Bound 1610 11 Upon hearing of his mother's illness in 1608, Rubens planned his departure from Italy for Antwerp. However, she died before he made it home. His return coincided with a period of renewed prosperity in the city with the signing of Treaty of Antwerp in April 1609, which initiated the Twelve Years' Truce. In September of that year Rubens was appointed court painter by Albert and Isabella, the governors of the Low Countries.

He received special permission to base his studio in Antwerp, instead of at their court in Brussels, and to also work for other clients. He remained close to the Archduchess Isabella until her death in 1633, and was called upon not only as a painter but also as an ambassador and diplomat. Rubens further cemented his ties to the city when, on October 3, 1609, he married Isabella Brant, the daughter of a leading Antwerp citizen and humanist Jan Brant. In 1610, Rubens moved into a new house and studio that he designed. Now the Rubenshuis museum, the Italian-influenced villa in the center of Antwerp contained his workshop, where he and his apprentices made most of the paintings, and his personal art collection and library, both among the most extensive in Antwerp. During this time he built up a studio with numerous students and assistants. His most famous pupil was the young Anthony van Dyck, who soon became the leading Flemish portraitist and collaborated frequently with Rubens.

He also frequently collaborated with the many specialists active in the city, including the animal painter Frans Snyders, who contributed to the eagle to Prometheus Bound and his good friend the flower-painter Jan Brueghel the Elder. Altarpieces such as The Raising of the Cross (1610) and The Descent from the Cross (1611-1614) for the Cathedral of Our Lady were particularly important in establishing Rubens as Flanders' leading painter shortly after his return. The Raising of the Cross, for example, demonstrates the artist's synthesis of Tintoretto's Crucifixion for the Scuola di San Rocco in Venice, Michelangelo's dynamic figures, and Rubens's own personal style. This painting has been held as a prime example of Baroque religious art. Rubens used the production of prints and book title-pages, especially for his friend Balthasar Moretus-owner of the large Plantin-Moretus publishing house to further extend his fame throughout Europe during this part of his career. With the exception of a couple of brilliant etchings, he only produced drawings for these himself, leaving the printmaking to specialists, such as Lucas Vorsterman.

He recruited a number of engravers trained by Goltzius, who he carefully schooled in the more vigorous style he wanted. He also designed the last significant woodcuts before the 19th century revival in the technique. Rubens established copyright for his prints. Most significantly in Holland, where his work was widely copied through print. In addition he established copyrights for his work in England, France and Spain. The Marie de' Medici Cycle and diplomatic missions (1621-1630) The Fall Of Man In 1621, the queen-mother of France, Marie de' Medici, commissioned Rubens to paint two large allegorical cycles celebrating her life and the life of her late husband, Henry IV, for the Luxembourg Palace in Paris. The Marie de' Medici cycle (now in the Louvre) was installed in 1625, and although he began work on the second series it was never completed. Marie was exiled from France in 1630 by her son, Louis XIII, and died in 1642 in the same house in Cologne where Rubens had lived as a child.

After the end of the Twelve Years' Truce in 1621, the Spanish Habsburg rulers entrusted Rubens with a number of diplomatic missions. Between 1627 and 1630, Rubens's diplomatic career was particularly active, and he moved between the courts of Spain and England in an attempt to bring peace between the Spanish Netherlands and the United Provinces. He also made several trips to the Northern Netherlands as both an artist and a diplomat. At the courts he sometimes encountered the attitude that courtiers should not use their hands in any art or trade, but he was also received as a gentleman by many. It was during this period that Rubens was twice knighted, first by Philip IV of Spain in 1624, and then by Charles I of England in 1630. He was awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree from Cambridge University in 1629. Rubens was in Madrid for eight months in 1628-1629. In addition to diplomatic negotiations, he executed several important works for Philip IV and private patrons.

He also began a renewed study of Titian's paintings, copying numerous works including the Madrid Fall of Man (1628-29; illustrated right). During this stay, he befriended the court painter Diego Velazquez. The two planned to travel to Italy together the following year. Rubens, however, returned to Antwerp and Velazquez made the journey without him. His stay in Antwerp was brief, and he soon traveled on to London. Rubens stayed there until April, 1630. An important work from this period is the Allegory of Peace and War (1629; National Gallery, London). It illustrates the artist's strong concern for peace, and was given to Charles I as a gift. While Rubens's international reputation with collectors and nobility abroad continued to grow during this decade, he and his workshop also continued to paint monumental paintings for local patrons in Antwerp. The Assumption of the Virgin Mary (1625-6) for the Cathedral of Antwerp is one prominent example. Last decade (1630-1640) The Judgment of Paris c. 1625 Rubens's last decade was spent in and around Antwerp.

Major works for foreign patrons still occupied him, such as the ceiling paintings for the Banqueting House at Inigo Jones's Palace of Whitehall, but he also explored more personal artistic directions. In 1630, four years after the death of his first wife, the 53-year-old painter married 16-year-old Helene Fourment. Helene inspired the voluptuous figures in many of his paintings from the 1630s, including The Feast of Venus (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), The Three Graces (Prado, Madrid) and The Judgment of Paris (Prado, Madrid). In the latter painting, which was made for the Spanish court, the artist's young wife was recognized by viewers in the figure of Venus. In an intimate portrait of her, Helene Fourment in a Fur Wrap, also known as Het Pelsken (illustrated left), Rubens's wife is even partially modeled after classical sculptures of the Venus Pudica, such as the Medici Venus. In 1635, Rubens bought an estate outside of Antwerp, the Chateau de Steen (Het Steen), where he spent much of his time.

Landscapes, such as his Chateau de Steen with Hunter (National Gallery, London; illustrated right) and Farmers Returning from the Fields (Pitti Gallery, Florence), reflect the more personal nature of many of his later works. He also drew upon the Netherlandish traditions of Pieter Bruegel the Elder for inspiration in later works like Flemish Kermis (c. 1630; Louvre, Paris). Rubens died from gout on May 30, 1640. He was interred in Saint Jacob's church, Antwerp. The artist had eight children, three with Isabella and five with Helene; his youngest child was born eight months after his death.

(From wikipedia) Rubens, Peter Paul (1577-1640) - 1610 Raising of the Cross… | Flickr RasMarley By: RasMarley Rubens, Peter Paul (1577-1640) - 1610 Raising of the Cross (Antwerp Cathedral) Sir Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 – May 30, 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp which produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, king of Spain, and Charles I, king of England.

Done Peter Paul Rubens's oil paintings gallery and museum 01 Medium Oil on canvas Dimensions Expression error: Missing operand for *259 x 267 cm 84031 Albert and Nicolaas Rubens Date between 1626(1626) and 1627(1627) Medium Oil on wood Dimensions Height: 157 cm (61.8 in). Width: 93 cm (36.6 in). cjr 87945 between 1626(1626) and 1627(1627) Medium Oil on wood cyf 24373 Albert and Nicolaas Rubens (mk27) c 1625 Oil on panel 62 1/4 x 36 1/4'' (158 x 92 cm) Collections of the Prince of Liechtenstein,Vaduz 20165 Albert and Nicolas Rubens (mk01) C.1626.

Oil on panel; 158x92cm 62 1/4x36 1/4in Sammlungen des Fursten von Liechtenstein,Vaduz 80604 Aletheia Talbot, Countess of Arundel Date 1620(1620) Medium oil cjr 51297 Allegory on the Blessings of Peace 1629-30 Oil on canvas, 203.5 x 298 cm 89350 Amazonenschlacht c.

1619 Medium oil on wood Dimensions 121 x 165 cm (47.6 x 65 in) cjr 73600 Date Deutsch: um 1615/1616 Medium Oil on canvas cyf 73502 Date 1614 Medium Oil on canvas Dimensions 142 X 108 cm cyf 43117 An Autumn Landscape with a View of Het Steen in the Earyl Morning mk170 circa 1636 Oil on oak 131.2x229.2cm 91424 1618 - oil on wood - 29 x 23 cm Date c. 1618 cyf 84129 Andromeda Date ca. 1638(1638) Medium Oil on oak Dimensions Height: 189 cm (74.4 in). Width: 94 cm (37 in).

cjr 3666 1630's Art History Museum, Vienna 70802 olja pa tra 66x43cm 1630-31 se 42048 Aparicion of Maria to San IIdefonso mk166 1630-1632 I Wave on Natural History Museum cloth Vienna 82101 Apollo and Daphne Date ca. 1636(1636) Medium Oil on wood Dimensions 28.5 x 27.5 cm (11.2 x 10.8 in) cjr 85709 1636(1636) Medium Oil on wood Dimensions 28.5 x 27.5 cm (11.2 x 10.8 in) cyf 71674 c. 1637-1638 Oil on wood 93439 c.

1622-1625 Medium oil on canvas Dimensions Deutsch: 394 x 727 cm cjr 20408 Apotheosis of Henry IV (mk05) Canvas,155 x 286 1/4''(394 x 727 cm) INV 1779 24378 Arachne Punished by Minerva (mk27) 1636 Oil on panel 10 1/2 x 15''(26.7 x 38.1 cm) Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,Richmond The Williams Fund,1958 94816 Assumption of the Virgin Mary 1626 Type Oil on panel Dimensions 490 cm x 325 cm cyf 93436 c.

1622-1625 Medium oil on canvas Dimensions Deutsch: 394 x 295 cm cjr 52973 1615(1615) Medium oil on canvas Dimensions 223 X 162 cm cyf 97217 Ceres and Two Nymphs with a Cornucopia 1608(1608) Medium oil on canvas Dimensions 22 X 17 in cyf 72008 1620 - 1628 Oil on canvas 223 x 162 cm 73500 Date 1620 - 1628 Medium Oil on canvas Dimensions 223 x 162 cm cyf 20134 Charle V at Miihlberg (mk01) 1548 Oil on canvas; 332x279cm 130 5/8x109 7/8in Museo del Prado,Madrid 98448 Charles Bonaventura de Longueval, Count de Bucquoi 1

621(1621) Medium oil on panel Dimensions 62 x 50 cm 20210 Charles I in Garter Robes (mk01) 1636 Oil on canvas; 253.4x153.6cm 99 3/4x60 1/2in Royal Collection, Windsor Castle 97095 circa 1603(1603) Medium oil on canvas Dimensions 75 X 55.5 cm cyf 52976 Art Museum Peter Paul Rubens 15 Peter Paul Rubens Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1577-1640 Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 ?C May 30, 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality.

He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp which produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, king of Spain, and Charles I, king of England. Rubens was a prolific artist. His commissioned works were mostly religious subjects, "history" paintings, which included mythological subjects, and hunt scenes. He painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house. He also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the Joyous Entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635. His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not detailed; he also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. He was one of the last major artists to make consistent use of wooden panels as a support medium, even for very large works, but he used canvas as well, especially when the work needed to be sent a long distance.

For altarpieces he sometimes painted on slate to reduce reflection problems. His fondness of painting full-figured women gave rise to the terms 'Rubensian' or 'Rubenesque' for plus-sized women. The term 'Rubensiaans' is also commonly used in Dutch to denote such women. Prev 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Next Peter Paul Rubens Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1577-1640 Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 ?C May 30, 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects.

In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp which produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, king of Spain, and Charles I, king of England. Rubens was a prolific artist. His commissioned works were mostly religious subjects, "history" paintings, which included mythological subjects, and hunt scenes. He painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house. He also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the Joyous Entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635. His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not detailed; he also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. He was one of the last major artists to make consistent use of wooden panels as a support medium, even for very large works, but he used canvas as well, especially when the work needed to be sent a long distance. For altarpieces he sometimes painted on slate to reduce reflection problems.

His fondness of painting full-figured women gave rise to the terms 'Rubensian' or 'Rubenesque' for plus-sized women. The term 'Rubensiaans' is also commonly used in Dutch to denote such women. Art Museum Peter Paul Rubens 1 Peter Paul Rubens Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1577-1640 Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 ?C May 30, 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp which produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, king of Spain, and Charles I, king of England. Rubens was a prolific artist.

His commissioned works were mostly religious subjects, "history" paintings, which included mythological subjects, and hunt scenes. He painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house. He also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the Joyous Entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635. His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not detailed; he also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. He was one of the last major artists to make consistent use of wooden panels as a support medium, even for very large works, but he used canvas as well, especially when the work needed to be sent a long distance. For altarpieces he sometimes painted on slate to reduce reflection problems. His fondness of painting full-figured women gave rise to the terms 'Rubensian' or 'Rubenesque' for plus-sized women. The term 'Rubensiaans' is also commonly used in Dutch to denote such women.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next Peter Paul Rubens Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1577-1640 Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 ?C May 30, 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp which produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, king of Spain, and Charles I, king of England. Rubens was a prolific artist. His commissioned works were mostly religious subjects, "history" paintings, which included mythological subjects, and hunt scenes. He painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes.

Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house. He also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the Joyous Entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635. His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not detailed; he also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. He was one of the last major artists to make consistent use of wooden panels as a support medium, even for very large works, but he used canvas as well, especially when the work needed to be sent a long distance. For altarpieces he sometimes painted on slate to reduce reflection problems. His fondness of painting full-figured women gave rise to the terms 'Rubensian' or 'Rubenesque' for plus-sized women. The term 'Rubensiaans' is also commonly used in Dutch to denote such women.

Rubens, Peter Paul (1577-1640) - 1622-26 The Arrival of Ma… | Flickr RasMarley By: RasMarley Rubens, Peter Paul (1577-1640) - 1622-26 The Arrival of Marie de Medici at Marseilles (Louvre) Sir Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 – May 30, 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp which produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, king of Spain, and Charles I, king of England.

Done Hay Hill Gallery - Peter Paul Rubens home about artists exhibitions press contact purchase PETER PAUL RUBENS (1577-1640) Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an extravagant Baroque style that emphasised movement, colour, and sensuality. He is well known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp that produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically educated humanist scholar and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, King of Spain, and Charles I, King of England. Peter Paul Rubens | Flemish artist | Britannica.com Peter Paul Rubens Albrecht Dürer Peter Paul Rubens, (born June 28, 1577, Siegen, Nassau, Westphalia [Germany]—died May 30, 1640, Antwerp, Spanish Netherlands [now in Belgium]), Flemish painter who was the greatest exponent of Baroque painting’s dynamism, vitality, and sensuous exuberance.

Though his masterpieces include portraits and landscapes, Rubens is perhaps best known for his religious and mythological compositions . As the impresario of vast decorative programs, he presided over the most famous painter’s studio in Europe. His powers of invention were matched by extraordinary energy and versatility. Peter Paul Rubens, self-portrait in oil, c. 1639; in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna Education and early career Rubens was born in the German town of Siegen , in Westphalia. His father, Jan Rubens, a lawyer and alderman of Antwerp , had fled the Spanish Netherlands (present-day Belgium) in 1568 with his wife, Maria Pypelinckx, and four children to escape religious persecution for his Calvinist beliefs. After Jan’s death in 1587, the family returned to Antwerp, where young Peter Paul, raised in his mother’s Roman Catholic faith, received a Classical education. His artistic training began in 1591 with his apprenticeship to Tobias Verhaecht, a kinsman and landscape painter of modest talent.

A year later he moved on to the studio of Adam van Noort, where he remained for four years until being apprenticed to Antwerp’s leading artist, Otto van Veen , dean of the painters’ guild of St. Luke. Van Veen imbued Rubens with a lively sense of painting as a lofty humanistic profession. Most of Rubens’s youthful works have disappeared or remain unidentified. The Portrait of a Young Man (1597) is his earliest dated work. In 1598 Rubens was admitted into the painters’ guild in Antwerp. He probably continued to work in van Veen’s studio before setting off on a sojourn in Italy in May 1600. In Venice he absorbed the luminosity and dramatic expressiveness of the Renaissance masterpieces of Titian , Tintoretto , and Veronese . Hired by Vincenzo I Gonzaga , duke of Mantua , Rubens proceeded to Mantua, where his chief duties were to make copies of Renaissance paintings, mainly portraits of court beauties.

In October 1600 Rubens accompanied the duke to Florence to attend the marriage-by-proxy of Gonzaga’s sister-in-law Marie de Médicis to King Henry IV of France, a scene Rubens was to re-create a quarter-century later for the queen. By the end of the first year he had traveled throughout Italy, sketchbook in hand. The copies he made of Renaissance paintings offer a rich survey of the achievements of 16th-century Italian art . Britannica Stories Scientists Ponder Menopause in Killer Whales In August 1601 Rubens arrived in Rome . There the new Baroque style heralded by Annibale Carracci and Caravaggio —a bold naturalism coupled with a revival of the heroically idealized forms of Michelangelo and Raphael —was quickly assimilated by Rubens. His first major Roman commission was for three large paintings (1601–02) for the crypt chapel of St. Helena in the Basilica of Santa Croce . In 1603 Gonzaga sent him on his first diplomatic assignment to Spain to present a shipment of paintings to King Philip III .

For Philip’s prime minister, the duke of Lerma, Rubens painted his first major equestrian portrait (1603), which took the Venetian tradition of Titian and Tintoretto a giant step forward in the conveyance of physical power and psychological confrontation. Toward the end of 1605 Rubens made his second trip to Rome. With his brother Philip he undertook an intensive study of ancient art and philology and began to amass a sizable collection of Roman sculpture , reliefs , portrait busts, and ancient coins . In 1606 he received his crowning commission in Rome: the painting over the high altar of the Chiesa Nuova (Church of Santa Maria in Vallicella), whose precious icon Rubens enshrined in an apotheosis borne aloft by a host of putti —a quintessentially Baroque conceit that was later adapted in sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini . Return to Antwerp Art & Architecture: Fact or Fiction? In October 1608, having received news that his mother was gravely ill, Rubens rushed home to Antwerp —but too late. Yet despite his personal loss, his arrival was otherwise timely.

His brother Philip had been appointed secretary of Antwerp. More important, negotiations for the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609–21) were being concluded between the Dutch separatists and Spain, which raised the prospects of peace and economic recovery for war-torn Flanders . Rubens was commissioned to paint for the Antwerp Town Hall a celebratory Adoration of the Magi (1609), which quickly established his fame at home. Though he still yearned for Italy, the Spanish Habsburg regents of Flanders, Archduke Albert and Archduchess Isabella, made him an offer too good to refuse. As their new court painter, Rubens was exempted from all taxes, guild restrictions, and official duties in Brussels . He could remain in Antwerp and organize his own studio. In October 1609 Rubens married the 19-year-old Isabella Brant, and he celebrated their happy union in his Double Portrait in a Honeysuckle Bower (1609–10).

In 1610 Rubens bought a magnificent townhouse to which he annexed a palatial studio, Classical portico , and garden pavilion—an Italian villa transplanted to Antwerp. Britannica Lists & Quizzes Editor Picks: Exploring 10 Types of Basketball Movies The Twelve Years’ Truce prompted a major refurbishing of Flemish churches. The first of Rubens’s two great Antwerp triptychs, The Raising of the Cross (1610–11), combined Italianate reflections of Tintoretto and Caravaggio with Flemish realism in a heroic affirmation of redemptive suffering. His second triptych for Antwerp’s cathedral, The Descent from the Cross (1611–14), is more Classical and restrained in keeping with its subject. This work reflected Rubens’s vigorous renewal of the early Netherlandish tradition of Jan van Eyck , Hans Memling , and Rogier van der Weyden . Its widespread fame was ensured by the publication of an engraving; among its future admirers was the young Rembrandt .

The decade from 1610 to 1620 witnessed an enormous production of altarpieces for Roman Catholic churches—powerful, emotive images of Christ, the Virgin Mary , and the saints—as Rubens became the chief artistic proponent of Counter-Reformation spirituality in northern Europe. Among his more important religious compositions from this period are The Last Judgment (c. 1616) and Christ on the Cross (also called Le Coup de Lance, 1620). Yet during this same decade Rubens also produced many paintings on secular themes—mythological, historical, and allegorical subjects, hunting scenes, and portraits. Among the finest of his mythological paintings is the Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus (c. 1617–18), while The Hippopotamus Hunt (c. 1615–16) typifies his vision of wild animal hunts. The Hippopotamus Hunt, oil on canvas by Peter Paul Rubens, c. … Alte Pinakothek, Munich; photograph, Joachim Blauel/Artothek Rubens was able to maintain this tremendous output owing to his large studio of assistants, apprentices, collaborators, and engravers.

A major painting would often begin as a modello—i.e., an oil sketch painted by Rubens on a small panel, after which he would make preparatory drawings of individual figures within the composition . The execution of the full-scale work would often be entrusted to assistants, though Rubens would usually paint key areas and thoroughly retouch the finished painting. Many of Rubens’s paintings were then reproduced in engravings, thereby guaranteeing the wide dissemination of his compositions throughout Europe. The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus, oil painting by Peter Paul … Scala/Art Resource, New York Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram Pinterest Rubens’s most talented assistant was the young Anthony van Dyck , 22 years his junior, who arrived at his studio as an apprentice about 1616 and stayed for four years. A true prodigy, van Dyck quickly absorbed Rubens’s robust style—his muscular, graceful physiques and sensuous interplays of light and colour—and faithfully imitated it under the master’s supervision. Rubens’s own coproductions with specialists such as the animal painter Frans Snyders and the flower-landscapist Jan Bruegel mark the Baroque zenith of artistic collaboration.

At the same time, his Four Continents (c. 1615), Lion Hunt (1621), Landscape with Carters (c. 1618), and many sketches from nature reveal his own versatility in the specialized areas of landscape and animal painting. In 1616 Rubens received his first tapestry commission, a series depicting the life of the legendary Roman consul Decius Mus. For each scene he painted a modello, which his assistants then enlarged into a full-scale canvas whose imagery was then duplicated in a tapestry by weavers. From Sir Dudley Carleton, the English ambassador to The Hague , Rubens acquired in 1618 a vast collection of ancient sculptures. His interest in sculpture was not limited to collecting. He designed monumental sculpture for the facade and interior of the magnificent new Jesuit church (now St. Charles Borromeo) in Antwerp, which was dedicated in 1621. He also contributed to the church’s architectural design.

Its high altar, enshrining his two interchangeable altarpieces devoted to Saints Ignatius and Francis Xavier (1617–18), was crowned by a semidome and illuminated by an oculus , resembling Rubens’s own recently completed “pantheon” for sculpture in his home. In 1620 Rubens contracted to design 39 ceiling paintings for the Jesuit church, to be executed by van Dyck and other assistants after his oil sketches revealing “the great speed and frenzy of his brush.” Finished within a year, these paintings justified Rubens’s claim to be “by natural instinct, better fitted to execute very large works than small curiosities.” Trending Topics Open Door policy In 1621, following the expiration of the Twelve Years’ Truce and the death of Archduke Albert, the widowed infanta Isabella engaged Rubens as her confidential agent in Spain’s diplomatic search for peace between Habsburg-controlled Flanders and the independent Dutch Republic to the north.

(The war between the Protestant Dutch and the Catholic Flemings resumed, however, and was sadly to continue for the rest of Rubens’s life.) By this time Rubens’s widespread fame as “the painter of princes and the prince of painters” permitted him to travel freely among royal courts for discreet meetings with sovereigns and their ministers, who would discuss matters of state while sitting for portraits. In 1622 Rubens was called to Paris by the queen mother of France, Marie de Médicis , to decorate one of the two main galleries of her newly built Luxembourg Palace. The widow of Henry IV sought to promote, in 21 huge canvases (1622–25), her life and her regency of France in epic fashion. Marie’s thwarted career required an unprecedented exercise of poetic license, but by exploiting his encyclopaedic knowledge of Classical mythology and allegory , Rubens raised her life to a mythic plane on which mortals mingle freely with the Olympian gods. At the same time, he designed for Louis XIII a tapestry cycle on the life of the emperor Constantine (1622–25).

During the 1625 marriage-by-proxy in Paris of King Louis’s sister, Henrietta Maria , to King Charles I of England, Rubens met the duke of Buckingham, who commissioned Rubens to paint his equestrian portrait (1625; destroyed), the epitome of High Baroque flamboyance in that genre . Several paintings by the famous artist Peter Paul Rubens show events from the life of Marie de … Todd Gipstein/Corbis Rubens complained that he was “the busiest and most harassed man in the world,” yet he continued to accept important ecclesiastical commissions. His Adoration of the Magi (1624) for the Abbey of St. Michael was crowned by three monumental sculptures of his own design. For the high altar of Antwerp’s cathedral he framed his Assumption of the Virgin (1624–27) with a marble portico that featured a typically Baroque interplay of painting and sculpture, spiritually “charging” the surrounding space. Nor did Rubens neglect private patrons. In the 1620s he executed masterly portraits of his physician and friend Ludovicus Nonnius (c.

1627), of his future sister-in-law Susanna Fourment (Le Chapeau de Paille, c. 1622–25), and of his sons Albert and Nicolaas (c. 1624–25). His Landscape with Philemon and Baucis (c. 1625) reveals, in a poetic vein, his heroic and cataclysmic view of nature. In 1625 the infanta Isabella commissioned from Rubens a vast tapestry cycle, the Triumph of the Eucharist (1625–27). For these 20 separate hangings, which form his most elaborate and complex program of religious art, Rubens invented a two-tiered architectural framework featuring tapestries-within-tapestries, an unprecedented display of Baroque illusionism. Anne of Austria, oil on canvas by Peter Paul Rubens, 1621–25; in the Louvre Museum, Paris. 85 … © Photos.com/Jupiterimages In 1626 Rubens’s domestic happiness was shattered by the death of his wife Isabella.

He soon embarked on a diplomatic odyssey in search of a peace between England and Spain as a first step toward negotiating a settlement with the Dutch Republic, which was England’s ally. The duke of Buckingham , who was the favourite of King Charles of England, was negotiating to purchase Rubens’s entire collection of antiquities. In the course of their meetings, Rubens tried to convince the skeptical Buckingham that England should cease supporting the Dutch in their struggle against Spanish rule in Flanders. Initially, the Spanish king, Philip IV , was aghast that such diplomacy be entrusted to a mere painter. But in August 1628 Rubens left for the Spanish court in Madrid en route to England. During his seven months in Madrid, besides pleading for a peace treaty with England, Rubens spent his time in the royal art gallery painting copies of masterpieces by Titian , to whose style he was now completely attuned as he explored the great Venetian’s fluent brushwork, vibrant colours, and luminous modeling. Looking over his shoulder was Philip IV’s young court painter, Diego Velázquez .

By April 1629, England was ready to negotiate, and Charles I sent for Rubens directly, indicating his eagerness to meet a man with his international reputation for intellect and artistic genius. Philip IV gave Rubens the title of “secretary of the king’s privy council of the Netherlands” in order to elevate the standing of his painter-envoy at the foreign court. Diana and Callisto, painting by Peter Paul Rubens after an original by … Bridgeman Art Library/Getty Images In London, Rubens encountered a maze of factions and intrigues through which he had to negotiate. Yet he prevailed, and it is to him personally that the peace treaty of 1630 between England and Spain can be attributed. He was awarded an honorary master of arts degree from the University of Cambridge . Awaiting the arrival of the Spanish ambassador, he painted his effusive Allegory of Peace and War (1629–30) as a memento of his successful diplomacy and gave it to the admiring English king.

In turn, Charles awarded Rubens a long-coveted commission to decorate the ceiling of the royal Banqueting House, which had recently been designed by the architect Inigo Jones as part of the Whitehall Palace complex of buildings in London. On the eve of his departure from England, Rubens was knighted by King Charles. Later career Back in Antwerp, Rubens was finally able to devote himself to his “beloved profession” again. In December 1630 he married the 16-year-old Helena Fourment, youngest daughter of the silk and tapestry merchant Daniel Fourment. Helena was to inspire some of the most personal and poignant portraits of Rubens’s later career, and their marriage was as fruitful as it was blissful, producing five children. Rubens often identified Helena with the goddess Venus , as in his glowing Venus and Adonis (c. 1635). In 1631 Philip IV knighted Rubens—the only painter so honoured by the kings of both England and Spain. Having lost all taste for politics, Rubens finally retired from his diplomatic career.

Venus and Adonis, oil on canvas by Peter Paul Rubens, mid- or late 1630s; in the … Photograph by Katie Chao. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, gift of Harry Payne Bingham, 1937 (37.162) The twilight decade of 1630–40 witnessed some of the most exuberant works of the rejuvenated master as he broadened his painterly style with looser, more tactile , almost “impressionistic” brushwork. In his Garden of Love (c. 1630–32), a marital allegory imbued with personal significance, an invented statue of Venus presides over a gathering of lovers, while in his more archaeological Feast of Venus (c. 1636) another statue of Venus presides over a clamorous pagan bacchanal. With similar abandon, Rubens’s Kermesse (c. 1630–35) evokes the spirit of the painter Pieter Bruegel in the joie de vivre of its dancing peasants. For his new father-in-law, Rubens designed his fourth and final tapestry cycle, the Life of Achilles (c.

1631–32). After completing a radiant, autumnal vision of Roman Catholic spirituality in the triptych of the Ildefonso Altarpiece (1630–32), he turned his attention to glorifying the reign of King Charles’s father, James I , in nine huge canvases for the Whitehall ceiling (1632–34), his translation of Italianate ceiling painting into England. In December 1633 the infanta Isabella died. Her nephew and successor, the infante Ferdinand, was welcomed as the new governor by a series of triumphal arches and stages designed by Rubens and erected along the processional route through Antwerp. These temporary monuments of architecture, sculpture, and painting required a virtual army of carpenters, sculptors, and painters all working under Rubens as impresario. This grandest, though somewhat ephemeral , of all his undertakings was later preserved in a volume of etchings by Theodoor van Thulden. On a smaller scale, Rubens continued to design book title-pages for the Plantin-Moretus Press in Antwerp, owned by his childhood friend Balthasar Moretus.

At his country estate, Het Steen in Elewijt, which he purchased in 1635, Rubens painted his glowing Landscape with a Rainbow (1636) and its pendant Landscape with Het Steen (1636). These complementary views of a countryside teeming with life celebrate the natural order of creation and present an Arcadian vision of humankind in harmony with nature. Such pictures alone, permeated with shimmering colour and light, would ensure Rubens’s fame as a landscapist, if no other works survived. For Philip IV’s hunting lodge outside Madrid, the Torre de la Parada, Rubens painted more than 60 oil sketches inspired by Ovid ’s Metamorphoses in which he reinterpreted the loves, conflicts, and passions of ancient gods and mortals. Despite frequent incapacitating attacks of “ gout ” (which was probably arthritis ), Rubens continued to accept a wide range of commissions. In 1638 he designed a triumphal carriage, or parade “float,” in the form of a ship to celebrate the Spanish naval victory over the Dutch forces at Calloo.

Yet his personal view of war remained deeply pessimistic, as revealed in his painting The Horrors of War (1637), a precursor of Picasso’s Guernica. Two of Rubens’s late portraits now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna contrast the public man and his private world. His stately Self-Portrait (c. 1638) presents Rubens not as an artist but as a self-confident and proud—if aging and visibly weary—knight wearing the sword of Charles I. By contrast, Het Pelsken (c. 1636–38) reveals an intimate view of a nude Helena modestly wrapping herself in fur. Rubens’s final Self-Portrait with Helena and Peter Paul (c. 1639–40) features his youngest son and namesake, born in 1637. Despite the rejuvenated visage Rubens here gave himself, death was not far away. After a severe attack of gout, he died in May 1640 and was buried in the Jacobskerk in Antwerp. His eventual successor as Flanders’ premier painter was Jacob Jordaens , van Dyck having died little more than a year after Rubens himself.

Assessment and influence The art of Peter Paul Rubens is a fusion of the traditions of Flemish realism with the Classicizing tendencies of the Italian Renaissance. Rubens was able to infuse his own astounding vitality into a powerful and exuberant style that came to epitomize the Baroque art of the 17th century. The ample, robust, and opulent figures in his paintings generate a pervasive sense of movement in vivid, dynamic compositions. Rubens was one of the most assimilative, versatile, and productive of all Western artists, and his almost limitless resources of invention enabled him to become the master of the greatest studio organization in Europe since that of Raphael in Rome a century before. The larger the scale of the undertaking, the more congenial it was to his spirit. The epic quality of Rubens’s art represented only one side of his multifaceted genius. A celebrated diplomat in his time, he was also a scholar and humanist, a learned Classicist and antiquarian, a prodigious correspondent in several languages, and even an amateur architect.

His profound learning enabled him to draw upon a wellspring of biblical narratives, Roman Catholic theology and hagiography , and Greek and Roman history and mythology for the subject matter and iconography of his art. A devout Roman Catholic, a loyal subject of the Spanish Habsburgs, a devoted husband, and the father of eight children—this prosperous, energetic, thoroughly balanced man presents the antithesis of the modern notion of struggling artist. Rubens’s profound stylistic influence extended over three centuries—from van Dyck to the Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir —and ranged far beyond Flanders. In Italy his influence was decisive on the Baroque painters Pietro da Cortona and Luca Giordano . In Spain his early impression on the young Velázquez was later superseded by his pervasive impact on Bartolomé Esteban Murillo , the most Rubensian of Spanish painters. At the Royal Academy in France the champions of colour over line—the Baroque over the Classical—found their model in Rubens. The advent of the Rococo style , heralded by Antoine Watteau early in the 18th century, coincided with the triumph of these Rubenists.

Among Rubens’s English beneficiaries were Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds . The 19th-century French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix wrote that Rubens “carries one beyond the limit scarcely attained by the most eminent painters; he dominates one, he overpowers one, with all his liberty and boldness.” Rubens’s recurrent impact on artists was almost as universal as the talents of the man himself. Painter, diplomat, impresario, scholar, antiquarian, architect, humanist—Rubens embodied the Baroque fulfillment of the Renaissance man.

Question: Which painter (1577-1640) was knighted by both Britain and Spain?
Answer: (Sir Peter Paul) Rubens