Peter Paul Rubens
(June 28, 1577 - May 30, 1640) |
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Secular Narratives, Historic Narratives, Mythological Narratives, Portaiture Art Work
| Name: |
Peter Paul Rubens |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
Siegen, Westphalia, Germany |
| Nationality: |
Flemish |
| Birth: |
June 28, 1577 |
| Death: |
May 30, 1640 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
Secular Narratives, Historic Narratives, Mythological Narratives, Portaiture |
| Medium: |
oil |
| Method: |
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| Style: |
Baroque |
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painting
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Biography
The greatest Remish painter of his age and one of the most celebrated painters of the seventeenth century, Rubens successfully translated Italian sources into a Flemish idiom and handed back to Italy as well as the rest of Europe the basis for the so-called "grand manner."
A courtier, nobleman, diplomat, humanist, collector, as well as painter, Rubens became one of the few artists in history who attained a social stature equal to and sometimes superior to that of his patrons. The son of Jan Rubens, a Calvinist who fled from Flanders to Germany, Peter was born during the family's exile. After her husband's death, Peter's mother returned to Antwerp in 1587. Unusually well-educated for a painter, Rubens was trained in Latin, German, French, and Flemish literature by the age of thirteen. Serving briefly as page to the Countess of La la ing, he then studied painting with Tobias van Haecht, Adam van Noort, and later with Otto van Veen.
In 1598, at the age of twenty-one, Rubens joined the Antwerp Painters' Guild. His development is generally divided into four phases: his early Italian period (1600-08), his early Antwerp period (1608-19), his "Great Series" mature phase (ca. 1620-30), and his late mature period (1630 until his death in 1640). Rubens's activity before his departure for Italy in 1600 remains obscure. A small portrait of a man of 1597 (New York, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Jack Linsky) is considered his earliest known painting. In Italy, Rubens stopped in Venice, studying and copying paintings by Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese. Their impact on his development cannot be underestimated. It was the Venetian tradition of color, vivaciously applied paint, and visual sensuality which Rubens so successfully adopted.
Joining the service of Vincenzo Gonzaga, duke of Mantua, Rubens became his court painter and remained in his employ until he returned north. During that time he studied intensively and served as advisor for the vast Gonzaga collection.
In 1601 Rubens left for Rome to copy some pictures for the duke. Many other excursions to Florence, Genoa, and Rome during his years in Italy extended Rubens's exposure to Italian painting and continued to shape his style. Though we know his itinerary and his sources, the oeuvre from this period is still incompletely understood owing to the absence of signed or dated canvases. Rubens also varied his style, making attributions difficult. Some secure works include the three paintings executed in Rome between 1601 and 1602 for Archduke Albert in the chapel of St. Helena at S. Croce di Gerusalemme (now Grasse, Grasse Hospital): St. Helena; Christ Crowned with Thorns;, and The Elevation of the Cross. Rubens embarked on his 0rst trip to Spain from 1603 to 1604 as a diplomatic envoy for Vincenzo Gonzaga. There Rubens produced the Twelve Apostles (Madrid, Prado) and The Duke of Lerma on Horseback (Madrid, Prado), which were of considerable importance for the later development of baroque painting. The Lerma portrait established an equestrian portrait formula that strongly influenced Velazquez as well as van Dyck.
On his return to Mantua, Rubens was commissioned to do a series of three altarpieces for the Jesuit church of St. Trinita between 1604 and 1605. The results are now scattered: the Holy Trinity Adored by Vincenzo Gonzaga and His Family is now in the Ducal Palace of Mantua and has been reduced in size. The Baptism of Christ is now in the Antwerp Museum of Fine Arts, while the Transfiguration is now in Nancy. These paintings demonstrate Rubens's interest in rich effect, powerful modeling, Venetian color, and painterliness.
In 1606 Rubens was likely in Genoa, where he painted a number of official portraits intended to be both decorative and formal. His portrait of Marchesa Brigida Spinola Doria (Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art) is one of the finest of these, wonderfully fusing person with persona. In 1607/8 he painted the first version of an altarpiece for the Chiesa Nuova (Church of S. Maria in Valicella) in Rome, which consisted of three paintings above (and flanking) the altar of the choir. Painting on a single canvas, Rubens produced a Madonna Adored by Saints; St. Gregory the Great with St. Papianus; and Maurus St. Domitilla with Sts. Nereus and Achilleus. Although it was not satisfactory to the Oratorian fathers, this painting, now in Grenoble, signals an important step in the direction of a truly baroque idiom, with its massive, energetic forms, glowing colors, vibrant textures, and palpable emotion. A second version, painted on slate with a resulting matte surface, remains in situ in the church.
While he was in Rome, Rubens also had the good sense to persuade his patron Gonzaga to acquire CaravaggioV Death of the Virgin of 1607, which had been rejected by the Carmelite fathers of S. Maria della Scala. At roughly the same time Rubens painted the Adoration of the Shepherds (Fermo, Pinacoteca Civica), which reveals his absorption of the influence of Correggio. In 1608 news of his mother's ill health and subsequent death brought Rubens back to Antwerp. He remained in Banders, where he was appointed painter to their Serene Highnesses the Infanta Isabella and Archduke Albert, the Hapsburg regents of Flanders. Another influential patron was Nicolaas Rockox, who served several terms as burgomaster of Antwerp. A year after his return Rubens married Isabella Brant, the daughter of the attorney Jean Brant. Several notable portraits of her include Self-Portrait with Isabella (dated 1609-10, Munich, Alte Pinakothek) and Isabella Brant (Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art). He was active, painting official portraits of the archdukes as well.
Rubens joined the Guild of Romanists and in 1611 purchased a house to which he added a studio. He set about organizing his life, becoming one of the most industrious and prolific painters in history. He reportedly arose at four each morning, attended mass, then painted until five in the afternoon. His work and patrons established him as the leading painter outside Italy, sought after by the nobility throughout Europe. Between 1609 and 1620 Rubens developed a number of approaches to the challenge of painting history on a large scale. Competing with the greatest masters of the Italian Renaissance, he employed exaggerated scale, perspective, action, form, and gesture, turning up the volume of energy and emotion in his desire to supersede them. His Adoration of the Magi (painted in 1609-10 for Antwerp, now in the Prado) typifies his interest in flowing energy and dramatic effect. His Elevation of the Cross (of the same date, done for Antwerp Cathedral) stands as a milestone in his career and in the history of Flemish painting. Called the first baroque altarpiece in Flanders, it is considered Rubens's first truly mature work. In its intensity, restless energy, and bravura handling, as well as its employment of a powerful diagonal to both organize the composition and instill a sense of overall movement, The Elevation of the Cross rendered obsolete the lingering regional mannerist or Caravaggist style adopted by local painters. Other significant works that share this phase of Rubens's development include The Defeat of Sennacherib (Munich, Alte Pinakothek) and its pendant Conversion of St. Paul (dated 1613-14, London, Courtauld Institute Galleries). His Battle of the Amazons (dated ca. 1618, Munich, Alte Pinakothek) is a highpoint of movement and struggle portrayed at a fever pitch.
An alternative approach, called by some a more conservative side of his work, was already evident by 1611 to 1614, when Rubens was producing another triptych for Antwerp Cathedral. His Descent from the Cross, adapting to its somber and meditative narrative content, reduces Rubens's accustomed motion and quiets the emotional level, employing compositional balance and harmony in contrast to The Raising of the Cross begun just a year earlier for the same cathedral. A mood similiar to the former painting is struck in his Prodigal Son (dated ca. 1612, Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten). As one would expect from such a genius, Rubens subtly and brilliantly varied the composition, coloration, expression, and degrees of naturalism in keeping with the subject and function of his pictures. He may have reached his dramatic peak in such subjects as the Fall of the Damned and the small Last Judgement (both Munich, Alte Pinakothek), in which, inspired by the works of Tintoretto, individual forms are swept into a sea of movement and dynamic energy. The range of Rubens's capabilities to create certain scenes that are alternately spontaneous and instantaneous, to create others that unfold and contrast the momentary with the static is particularly notable in one of his most famous paintings; The Abduction of the Daughters ofLeucippus (dated 1618- 20, Munich, Alte Pinakothek).
From 1620 to 1630 Rubens was preoccupied with large-scale decorative projects. The practice he had developed earlier of creating small oil sketches for his massive paintings proved to be invaluable. In order to complete these projects he employed the ablest painters in Antwerp as collaborators. In addition to Anthony van Dyck, Rubens hired Jacob Jordaens and Frans Snyders to provide parts of or whole paintings following his own design. The first of his important commissions was the ceiling for the Jesuit church of Antwerp (destroyed by a fire in 1718). Sketches for thirty-nine canvases were painted to aid his assistants. Consisting of first thoughts done in grisaille swiftly painted on small panels, as well as more elaborate color sketches, these works show how well Rubens adapted what he had learned during his Venetian sojourn. While work on the Antwerp project was progressing, Rubens accepted another commission in 1622 for twelve tapestry designs depicting The Life of Constantine for Louis XIII. In the same year he also began work on what may be his most celebrated pictorial cycle, The Life of Marie de' Medici (Paris, Louvre), painted for the Luxembourg palace. Here Rubens's adroitness in mingling fact with fiction, of ennobling and embellishing his sources, yielded a new type of political allegory in which classical sources and contemporary events are effortlessly conflated. Work on the Medici cycle continued intermittently until 1625, with Rubens making several trips to Paris to complete the project. The impact of the cycle, in which a rather silly and minor monarch is elevated to the status of a living divinity, was not lost on the courts of Europe. Rubens's grand manner of painting soon set the standard the rest of Europe would follow. Sketches for the paintings now survive in Munich (Alte Pinakothek), Paris (Louvre), and St. Petersburg (Hermitage).
From 1625 to 1628 Rubens worked on fifteen tapestry designs commissioned by the Archduchess Isabella for the Convent of the Carmelites in Madrid. The bulk of surviving sketches are preserved in the Prado. In 1625 Rubens also met the duke of Buckingham in Paris and painted his portrait (destroyed in World War II). The duke purchased Rubens's collection of classical statues as well as several paintings, and spread his name further in England. Widowed in 1626, Rubens accepted a diplomatic mission to Spain in 1628, where he painted portraits of the Spanish royal family and copied several of the king's Titians. Rubens also met Velazquez whom he admired, and encouraged to travel to Italy. In 1629 Philip IV appointed Rubens Secretary to the Secret Council and entrusted him with conducting peace negotiations with the English court. He was received into England with great honors, achieving peace during his nine months there and also finding time to paint portraits of the king and queen with their four children (now in Windsor Castle) and decorate the ceiling of the Banqueting House of Whitehall in London. (The sketches are preserved in London, Wallace Collection; Paris, Lou
e; Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen; St. Petersburg, Hermitage).
Charles I bestowed a knighthood on Rubens in 1630, an honor also awarded by Philip IV. From 1627 to 1631 Rubens was also engaged in negotiations about the decorations of the Galerie Henri IV, a further commission from Marie de' Medici for the Luxembourg Palace. Thwarted in her goals by Cardinal Richelieu, who may have foreseen the danger of further visual propaganda, Marie was expelled from France in 1630 and the project was abandoned. Sketches for it are now preserved in Bayonne (Musee Bonnat) and in London (Wallace Collection). After 1630 Rubens entered a new phase in his career. He was remarried, this time to the sixteen-year-old Helena Fourment, with whom he was evidently enchanted.
Relieved from diplomatic duties, Rubens was able to paint more to please himself, despite the demands of continuing largescale decorations. Some of his most personal, endearing, and innovative images were produced in the decade before his death in 1640. Among them are his many portraits of Helena, of which Helena Fourment in a Fur Wrap also known as Het Pelskeu (dated 1638, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) is one of the finest. Here a conflation of personal portraiture, nude study, and classical myth have produced an image unique in the history of Western art. Intimate, sensuous, and spontaneous, the portrait shows the nude Helena only as she would have revealed herself to her husband. Shyly wrapping herself in a fur (perhaps to keep out the cold of the studio), she looks smilingly, trustingly, and lovingly at her husband, an intimate moment repeated in none of the many nudes that constitute one of the principal traditions of Western painting.
In 1635 Rubens also acquired a new estate, the ChSteau de Steen, where he painted in solitude, studying the countryside that surrounded him. Remarkable and highly personal landscapes were the result, including An Autumn Landscape with a View of the Chateau de Steen (London, National Gallery), Landscape with a Rainbow (London, Wallace Collection), Landscape with Peasants Returning from the Fields (Florence, Palazzo Pitti). Portraying the urgent and animate spirit of nature that provides a sense of mutability and change despite (he fairly static nature of the subject, these landscapes were particularly important for the artists of the rococo nearly a century later. Rubens's religious and mythological paintings from this period were equally striking. His lldefonso Triptych (1630-32), with its diaphanous, hazy light, its shimmering surfaces and serene mood, is one of his finest paintings, expressing a delicate and reverent piety within its opulent grandeur.
When the Cardinal Infante Ferdinand succeeded the Infanta as the new governor of Antwerp in 1635, Rubens was sought out once more. He was appointed court painter in 1636 on the basis of the decorations he had designed to celebrate the cardinal's formal entry into the city. His modelli are now preserved in Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Scheme Kunsten), Bayonne (Musee Bonnat), and St. Petersburg (Hermitage); more assistance than usual was provided by other artists.
His last important commission came from Philip IV, who wanted scenes from Ovid and other mythologies to adorn twenty-five rooms in his hunting lodge, the Torre de la Parada, near Madrid. Providing fifty sketches for the mythological scenes, Rubens also arranged to send 112 paintings (mostly done by Jordaens and other collaborators) to Spain. Rubens's sketches for this project (preserved largely in Bayonne, Musee Bonnat; Brussels, Mus6e d'Art Ancien; Madrid, Prado; Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen) are considered to be his most personal, spontaneous, and economical.
During the last thirteen years of his life Rubens suffered from gout, and in the late 1630s his painting arm began to fail. Upon his death, all Europe mourned the loss of one of its most influential and multifaceted geniuses. His impact was enormous, not only among Flemish artists, who could not ignore him, but also among Dutch and Italian painters.
Like all great artists, Rubens absorbed and transformed his sources. To an inherent and prodigious facility for painting and drawing from nature was added the ability to understand and assimilate the great lessons from the past Of all his sources, the Venetian influence was the most significant from the beginning to the end of his career. Besides an appreciation for light and paint, the Venetians (particularly Tintoretto) taught Rubens the value of juxtaposing (and integrating) the rigid geometry of the picture surface with the organic quality of natural forms. From the Venetians he also learned the importance of grand pictorial narrative that relies on energetic, actively posed figures, as well as facial expression, to carry its meaning. Here again, Tintoretto was particularly important for Rubens. One can hardly imagine Rubens's development of large-scale history work without such seminal works as Tintoretto*s Crucifixion in the Scuola di San Rocco, nor can Rubens's development of the court portrait be understood without seeing the court portraits by Titian.
Rubens's impact on European painting was fundamental. He set the standard for grand pictorial narrative for centuries to come. His version of the court portrait became, via van Dyck, the convention in England, Flanders, and France. His mastery of decorative mural painting established him as the supreme decorator of his era and a wellspring for the decorative tradition that lived on through the eighteenth century. His vital, energetic, fluid forms, as well as his sensual treatment of meduim and subject matter, set the stage for the rococo. Equally important, but less obvious, Rubens was one of the earliest painters whose personal life left a significant trace in his art. This daring to translate not simply the ordinary, but the highly personal, into the sphere of creative endeavor is today taken as a matter of course for artists, but in Rubens's time only someone of his stature, talent, and vision, as well as his independence from patrons, could have developed the such precocious visual essays on life in an artistic family. |
Samples of Work
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