Baroque Age
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640)
Flemish Baroque painter.
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) was the dominant painter of the Catholic Baroque in northern Europe and the presiding genius of Antwerp's great age. Learned, multilingual, and preternaturally productive, he spent eight formative years in Italy (1600–1608) absorbing Titian's colour and warmth, the antique, and the drama of Michelangelo and the Carracci, then returned to Antwerp to build the most important workshop in Europe. From it poured altarpieces, mythologies, hunts, portraits, and tapestry and pageant designs at a scale and speed no rival could match.
His art is one of surging energy and abundance: muscular bodies in torsion, silks and flesh described with sensuous relish, storm and movement organised into grand diagonal designs. The two vast triptychs for Antwerp Cathedral — The Elevation of the Cross and The Descent from the Cross — announced a new Baroque power in the North, while the twenty-four canvases of the Marie de' Medici cycle turned a queen's life into mythological spectacle. His late works, such as The Garden of Love, glow with private happiness and painterly freedom.
Rubens was also a diplomat and courtier, trusted with delicate missions between the courts of Europe and knighted by both Philip IV of Spain and Charles I of England — the 'prince of painters and painter of princes.' His workshop trained a generation, Anthony van Dyck the greatest among them, and his oil sketches, dashed off to plan and direct the grand machines, remain among the most vivid records of a great artist thinking with a brush. His many surviving letters, edited in translation by Ruth Magurn, make him one of the most eloquently documented of all painters.
The words the record keeps using: exuberant, energetic, sensuous, abundant, virtuosic, dynamic, learned.
At a glance
- Lived 1577–1640
- Origin Flemish
- Worked in Rome, Antwerp
- Era Baroque Age
- Movements Flemish Baroque
- Mediums Oil on panel, Oil on canvas
- Techniques Oil glazing, Alla prima (wet-in-wet), Oil sketch (modello)
Works in the archive
- Venus Wounded by a Thorn, 1608 (USC Fisher Museum of Art)
The nude goddess bends to draw a bramble thorn from her foot, her body caught in a graceful twist of effort and small pain. The subject comes from Bion's 'Lament for Adonis,' in which Venus, grieving her dead lover,… - The Elevation of the Cross, 1610 (Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp)
Rubens's first great Antwerp triptych, painted just after his return from Italy: straining, muscular executioners heave the cross upright with the body of Christ already nailed to it. All the lessons of Italy —… - The Descent from the Cross, 1612 (Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp)
The central panel of one of Rubens's two great triptychs for Antwerp Cathedral: the dead Christ is lowered from the cross onto a brilliant white shroud, borne down by mourners in a single continuous diagonal. Restrained… - The Landing of Marie de' Medici at Marseilles, 1622 (Musée du Louvre, Paris)
One of the twenty-four huge canvases of the Marie de' Medici cycle, painted for the queen mother of France to glorify her life. As Marie steps ashore at Marseilles, Fame trumpets overhead and voluptuous sea-nymphs and a… - Modello for the Assumption of the Virgin, 1622 (Mauritshuis, The Hague)
A rapid oil sketch, or modello, for a large altarpiece of the Assumption: the Virgin borne up to heaven on a swirl of angels above the astonished apostles crowding her empty tomb. Sketches like this were the engine of… - The Garden of Love, 1633 (Museo del Prado, Madrid)
A late, personal work celebrating love and married happiness: elegantly dressed couples gather in a lush garden before a grotto, encouraged by a swarm of plump cupids. Painted after Rubens's second marriage to the young…
What was said
Writing in 1621 to the English agent William Trumbull, Rubens described himself as by natural instinct far better suited to very large works than to small curiosities, declaring that his talent was such that no undertaking, however vast in size or varied in subject, had ever surpassed his courage.
In his 1618 correspondence with Sir Dudley Carleton, offering paintings in exchange for antique sculptures, Rubens frankly graded the works by the degree of his own participation — some entirely by his hand, others begun by pupils and finished or retouched by him — a candid record of how his large workshop actually operated.
Rubens's dual role as artist and courtier is well documented: he undertook diplomatic missions between the courts of Spain, France, and England and was knighted by both Philip IV and Charles I, earning his lasting reputation as the prince of painters and painter of princes.
Lineage
Learned from Titian, Paolo Veronese
What would Peter make of your idea?
The Artiquity Studio makes a new picture in this hand's manner from a few words or a photograph — grounded in the technique, palette and subjects recorded above, and always credited "after Peter Paul Rubens", never passed off as a found work. Open the Studio with Peter · Keep a life moment the way Peter would · Pictures made after Peter