Rubens, Peter Paul (1577-1640)

A detail from Kermesse, which Rubens is thought to have painted c. 1622. This is the courtier, international diplomat, and friend of royalty showing that he knows how ordinary Flemish folk let their hair down on carnival day. It is almost reminiscent of the work of Pieter Brueghel, whose artist son (also Pieter) was a great friend of Rubens.

Rubens' painting known as The Three Graces. Women of ample proportions are sometimes described as ‘Rubenesque’. A full figure was a sign of wealth and social status, as poorer women tended to be thin from lack of food.

Flemish painter. He was one of the greatest figures of the baroque period. Bringing the exuberance of Italian baroque to northern Europe, he created innumerable religious and allegorical paintings for churches and palaces. These show mastery of drama and movement in large compositions, and a love of rich colour and texture. He also painted portraits and, in his last years, landscapes. The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus (1617; Alte Pinakothek, Munich) is typical.

Rubens's energy was prodigious. In less than 40 years he produced more than 3,000 paintings. He created masterpieces in every genre: religious, for example The Descent from the Cross (c. 1611-14; Antwerp Cathedral); portraiture, the so-called Chapeau de pailles (c. 1620; National Gallery, London); peasant life, the Kermesse (c. 1622; Louvre, Paris); allegory, War and Peace (c. 1629-30; National Gallery, London); and landscape, the Château de Steen (c. 1635-37; National Gallery, London).

As a colourist and technician he was remarkable; he devised a classic oil method of thinly painted shadow and loaded highlight. His studio-factory was a model of efficient administration, his assistants so able and his supervision so well directed, that the standard of works not due to his hand alone is consistently high. He summoned into being a whole school of engravers, occupied in reproducing his works. His influence on other painters - Velázquez, Watteau, Delacroix, and Constable among them - was enormous.

He was also a great collector (of ancient marbles and gems, pictures, manuscripts, and books), a classical scholar who knew and corresponded with people of learning throughout Europe, and a diplomat who spoke five languages.

Rubens was born in Siegen, Westphalia, and was taken to Antwerp 1587. His father, Jan Rubens, a lawyer, had gone into exile, but on his death 1587, his widow returned to Antwerp, where Peter Paul was educated at the Jesuit school, and at 16 he was prepared for courtly life as a page of the Countess Lalaing.

He studied art under the ‘Romanist’ masters Tobias Verhaecht, Adam van Noort, and Otto van Veen, and in 1598 was a member of the Painters' Guild in Antwerp. He went to Italy, and worked as court painter to Vincenzo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua 1600-08, painting many portraits of the nobility; in 1603 he went to Spain on the duke's behalf. His study of the Italian masters, especially of Titian and Veronese in Venice, was a major factor in the development of his powers. He returned to Antwerp, was appointed painter to the Brussels court of the Archduke Albert and the Infanta Isabella 1609, and gathered a brilliant cohort of assistants around him. A triumphant release of force appears in the great religious compositions of 1609-21 for the cathedral and the Church of the Jesuits in Antwerp, in which Rubens seems to express the essence of the Counter-Reformation, using all the compositional and theatrical devices of the baroque style.

This decorative magnificence on a vast scale was applied 1622-25 to secular use in the cycle of the Life of Marie de' Medici, at whose invitation he visited Paris. His happy marriage with Isabella Brant was ended by her death 1626, and Rubens was now often away from the home he had built in Antwerp (since 1946 renovated as a Rubens museum).

Diplomatic missions took him to Spain 1628, where he painted Philip IV and met Velázquez; and to London 1629-30, where he was made an honorary Master of Arts of Cambridge University and commissioned to paint the ceiling (extant and now restored) for the Banqueting Hall, Whitehall. On his return to Antwerp 1630 he married Helena Fourment, a girl of 16, who inspired a number of portraits and appears also in various religious and mythological works. In 1635 he bought a country residence, the Château de Steen, and during the last five years of his life was occupied with paintings for the Torre de la Parada, Philip IV's hunting lodge near Madrid, and, for his personal satisfaction, with landscapes.