1577-1640 • Flemish • Painter • Baroque
"I do not know what to praise most in my friend Rubens: his mastery of painting ... or his knowledge of all aspects of belles lettres, or finally, that fine judgment which inevitably attends such fascinating conversation. " - Gaspard Scioppius, 1607
Because the vastness as well as the variety of Rubens's accomplishments is daunting, it is instructive, if not sobering, to note his inauspicious background. His father, Jan, a lawyer, became a Calvinist and was forced to flee Antwerp when the city became Catholic under the Spanish in 1568. (Peter Paul was born in Westphalia.)
Jan was convicted of adultery with his employer, Anne of Saxony, Princess of Orange, and sent to the castle's dungeon. As one historian has commented, "Letters from Rubens's mother ...written to her jailed husband and in entreaty to the House of Nassau suggest that Rubens may have inherited his strength and nobility of character from his mother." Returning home to Antwerp with his mother after his father's death, Rubens apprenticed with three different artists and then traveled to Italy, where he avidly studied the works of the major Italian artists, from CARAVAGGIO and CORREGGIO to MANTEGNA, and also the art of ANTIQUITY.
His clients were among the nobility, and in 1603, when he was 26, one of them, Vincenzo GONZAGA, duke of Mantua, sent him to Spain on his first mission as a political ambassador. He returned to Antwerp at his mother's death in 1608 and became court painter to the Archduke Albert and his wife Isabella, with special permission to remain in Antwerp (the court was at Brussels). Well mannered, with many languages and social graces, he would later receive more diplomatic assignments. His favored position enabled him to sidestep the local GUILD and freely establish his immense studio, exempt from registering his students.
Thus, although it is believed that he had a great many assistants, the number is uncertain. Contemporary accounts describe a busy scene in which numerous young men worked on paintings for which Rubens had made sketches and to which he would apply the finishing touches. Meanwhile, he had Tacitus read aloud to him as he painted, listened, dictated letters, and answered visitors' questions. His well-organized and highly efficient WORKSHOP was expanded to include a staff of print makers who copied his paintings for REPRODUCTION.
Occasionally Rubens had to replace a painting that a client complained was unsatisfactory, but he reminded clients that if they wished something entirely by his own hand, that should be specified in the contract. As specialization had grown, so did collaboration, and Rubens frequently worked in partnership with others: Jan BRUEGEL, SNYDERS, JORDAENS, and van DYCK among them. It has been said that no artist in the southern Netherlands was unaffected by Rubens, and that is probably accurate, if not an understatement.
However, he was not primarily a successful entrepreneur; it must be stressed that Rubens was an inventive genius at his art. His figure paintings of nude women especially led to coinage of the term "Rubenesque." His portraits, while as exacting in details of fashion, fabric, and jewels, broke with earlier traditions of formality, first by inventing informal poses and then by his sensitivity to the personality of his subject.
His HISTORY PAINTINGS explode with BAROQUE energy and powerful illumination, their composition frequently exploiting a diagonal movement that increases their energy. This is true of two of his major ALTARPIECESR, raising of the Cross (1610-11) and Descent from the Cross (1612-14). In both, the overwhelming presence and muscular tension of the bodies are unmistakable, yet Christ seems both physically solid and weightless at the same time. Rubens was a devout Catholic, closely associated with the Jesuits. He was also happily married-twice, in fact; after his first wife died, he remarried in 1630, at the age of 5 3. His bride, Helene Fourment was 16. She was his model for several paintings, including the well known, full-length image of a nude in a fur coat, Het Pelsken (The Little Fm~ or Venus, c. 1635-39).