Peter Paul Rubens
1577 - 1640
Peter Paul Rubens was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish 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, hunt scenes and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. Not just that he was running a large studio in Antwerp that produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, but he was also a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat.
Rubens was born in 1577, in Siegen, Westphalia, to Jan Rubens and Maria Pypelincks. In 1589, two years after his father's death, Rubens moved with his mother to Antwerp, where he was raised Catholic. Religion figured prominently and Rubens later became one of the leading voices of the Catholic Counter-Reformation style of painting.
In Antwerp Rubens received a education, studying Latin and classical literature. By fourteen he began his artistic apprenticeship. He studied under two of the city's leading painters of the time, Adam van Noort and Otto van Veen. He entered in 1598 the Guild of St. Luke as an independent master.
1600, Rubens traveled through Italy, visiting Venice, settling in Mantua at the court of duke Vincenzo I of Gonzaga as his diplomat, traveling to Rome, Florence, Mantua, and then Genoa. In Genoa, Rubens painted numerous portraits, in a style that would influence later paintings by Anthony van Dyck, Joshua Reynolds, and Thomas Gainsborough. During this period Rubens received important commission for the high altar of the new church, Santa Maria in Vallicella. The impact of Italy on Rubens was great.
Rubens planned his departure from Italy for Antwerp1609. His return coincided with a period of renewed prosperity in the city. Soon that year Rubens was appointed court painter by Albert and Isabella, the governors of the Low Countries, and received permission to base his studio in Antwerp. In 1609, Rubens married Isabella Brant, the daughter of a leading Antwerp citizen and humanist Jan Brant.
In 1610, Rubens built up a studio with numerous students and assistants. His most famous pupil was the young Anthony van Dyck. He collaborated with his good friend the flower-painter Jan Brueghel the Elder. He often sub-contracted elements such as animals or still-life in large compositions to specialists such as Frans Snyders, or Jacob Jordaens.
His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not detailed. He also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. Altarpieces such as "The Raising of the Cross" and "The Descent from the Cross" for the "Cathedral of Our Lady" were particularly important in establishing Rubens as Flanders' leading painter shortly after his return. This painting has been held as a prime example of Baroque religious art.
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. Rubens was twice knighted, first by Philip IV of Spain in 1624, and then by Charles I of England in 1630. He was also awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree from Cambridge University in 1629. While Rubens's international reputation with collectors and nobility abroad continued to grow during this decade, he continued to paint monumental paintings: "The Assumption of the Virgin Mary".
In 1630, four years after the death of his first wife, the 53-year-old painter married 16-year-old Hélène Fourment. Hélène inspired the voluptuous figures in many of his paintings from the 1630s, including "The Feast of Venus", "The Three Graces" and" The Judgment of Paris".
In 1640, Rubens died at age 63 of gout. Between his two marriages the artist had eight children, three with Isabella and five with Hélène; his youngest child was born eight months after his death.
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