Peter Paul Rubens

Flemish painter and diplomat

• Born: June 28, 1577
• Birthplace: Siegen, Westphalia (now in Germany)
• Died: May 30, 1640
• Place of death: Antwerp, Brabant, Spanish Netherlands (now in Belgium)

One of the most successful artists of his time, with a huge workshop of artists who completed many of his commissions, Rubens is regarded as the most important creator of Baroque art. Also, as a distinguished diplomat, he used his cheerful personality and broad human interests to work for the cause of peace.

Early Life

Peter Paul Rubens was the son of a Protestant attorney from Antwerp who moved to Germany to escape religious persecution. Although Rubens was baptized a Calvinist in Germany, he became a devout convert to Catholicism. When his father died in 1587, Rubens and his mother returned to Antwerp, where he apprenticed himself to several local painters. From his last teacher, Otto van Veen (1556-1629), he acquired considerable knowledge of Italian painting. By 1600, Rubens was in Rome, studying and copying the works of the Italian Renaissance and preparing himself to become the first Northern European painter to combine the grandiose and realistic styles of the Italian and Dutch masters.

Very little survives from Rubens’s Italian period (1600-1608), but in his Portrait of the Marchesa Brigida Spinola-Doria (1606), there is evidence of his early efforts to make his mark in the tradition of international portrait painting. As Jennifer Fletcher notes, the artist’s subject came from a family that owned portraits by Titian, who was renowned for his vivid color and expressiveness. The marchesa’s exalted social position is suggested by the elegance and amplitude of her luminous dress, the crimson drapery that flows behind her in the center of the frame, and the beautifully sculpted architectural details—all of which convey a richness and harmony of effect. What makes the painting truly remarkable, however, is its liveliness. This is no staid study of a society matron. She looks as though she is about to smile as she moves through the artist’s frame. There is energy in her face, in the details of her clothing, and in the setting that makes this scene triumph over the mere reporting of details.

In 1608, Rubens returned to Antwerp but failed to reach his ailing mother in time. He planned to resume residence in Italy, but his success in Antwerp was so immediate and overwhelming (he became court painter to the Spanish viceroys of the Netherlands) and was followed quickly by his marriage in 1609 to Isabella Brant, that he never saw Italy again. His happy marriage is illustrated in a portrait of himself and his wife (1609). They are seated together in a honeysuckle bower, her hand resting gently and comfortably upon his in the center of the frame, his right foot partially underneath her flowing dress. They look out toward the viewer, forming a picture of mutual contentment and intimacy. Most striking is their sense of ease and equality. Although the artist is seated above his wife, he is also leaning toward her—any dominance he might seem to have is mitigated by the fact that his hat is cropped at the top while his wife’s is shown in full, making her larger figure command the right side of the frame. When the positioning of their bodies and their clothing is compared, it is clear that Rubens has shown a couple that complement each other in every conceivable way. This dashing portrait reveals a man on the brink of a great career.

Life’s Work

The years immediately following Rubens’s return to Antwerp were vigorous and innovative. Two large triptychs, The Elevation of the Cross (c. 1610-1611) and Descent from the Cross (c. 1611-1614), altarpieces for Antwerp Cathedral, confirmed his great ability to create monumental yet realistic works of art. The fifteen-foot central panels create a sense of deep space and perspective while also conveying great struggle and strain. The cross is raised by heavily muscled men in a powerful diagonal movement that bisects one central panel. Below the cross is a dog in the left corner sticking out its tongue in agitation while the trees in the upper right corner seem to rustle in the wind. This is a painting that concentrates on the dynamism of the event, whereas in the Descent from the Cross the limp and ravaged aged body of Christ is carefully taken down by his followers, with each one expressing grief in bodily postures and gestures that concentrate nearly all the emotion of the scene on their reactions. In their bent bodies, outstretched arms and hands, grasping fingers, and intensely focused faces, the coherence of their feelings is evident. They are at one with the event.

Work on such a scale demanded that the artist take on collaborators. Although Rubens would work out the conception of a portrait, a landscape, or a religious or mythical subject, he often left the details or some part of a painting to his pupils and collaborators. Thus, in a letter Rubens notes that the eagle pecking Prometheus’s liver was done by Frans Snyders (1579-1657). That these paintings are animated by Rubens’s prodigious imagination is proved by his enormously powerful sketches, such as the one of a lioness (c. 1614-1615), which captures its power and grace from the rear—its huge tail sweeping through the center of the drawing and to the left, with its massive head sweeping from the center of the frame to the left, its huge paw lifted in mid-stride.

Rubens was drawn to exotic subjects such as a Tigers and Lions Hunt (1617-1618). Although his animals are anatomically correct (he studied them in the menageries of noblemen), this stirring painting is about the enormous courage of the hunters and the natural ferocity of beasts. Such paintings appealed to a Europe that was still discovering foreign lands and were a form of entertainment. As C. V. Wedgwood observes, many of these paintings are still admired today for their composition and restraint, for Rubens tends to emphasize the self-control of his human figures even as they seem about to be torn apart.

Rubens had great energy (often rising at 4:00 a.m. to work), was devoted to his family, was a shrewd businessman, and was an even-tempered artist. Such qualities made him invaluable as a respected emissary in the courts of Europe. Isabella, Regent of the Southern Netherlands, sent him on diplomatic missions to Spain and England, and he worked tirelessly to bring the Netherlands back into the Spanish Catholic company of nations. Having worked as a commissioned artist all of his life, he understood the importance of compromise, of balancing competing interests.

After seventeen years of happy marriage, Rubens’s wife died in 1626. Four years later, he married Hélène Fourment, enjoying another happy marriage that is reflected in his mellow, luscious paintings of the 1630’s—for example, The Three Graces , in which Venus and her handmaidens frolic in a dancelike rhythm, their arms enfolding one another, their flesh visibly showing the imprint of one another’s fingers. Rubens paints human flesh that ripples loosely, is firm and yet pliant, and is exquisitely modulated in many different tones of white, red, and brown. No other artist of his time could convey the same quality of a painting ripening into view.

Significance

In his last years, Rubens returned to landscape painting with renewed vigor. In Landscape with a Rainbow (c. 1635), he emphasizes an ordinary country scene—cattle, a pond with ducks, two women walking down a road past a driver and cart—that suggests, in a way, the daily coming and going of a rural scene, of precisely those activities that define a landscape momentarily distinguished by a rainbow. His ploy is the opposite of that of so many of his predecessors, who used rustic settings in a stylized fashion to suggest the sublimity of nature. In Landscape with a Sunset (c. 1635), there is a kind of visionary quality, a perfect blending of the land, the trees, the sheep, the building at the far-right edge of the painting, and the individual seated with a dog beside him against a sky turning various shades of gray, purple, and yellow. As in Landscape with the Château De Steen (c. 1635), the depiction of nature seems to be an end in itself, an evocation of harmony and balance that expresses the artist’s inner nature. Yet the details of these scenes are so sharply realized that they never blur into vague idealizations.

Rubens died in 1640 of a heart attack that was apparently brought on by his gout, a debilitating illness that had crippled him periodically for three years. It did not stop his enormous productivity. If there were days when he could not paint, there were other days when he probably worked faster than any other artist of his time. His lusty spirit was translated into a facility with brushwork that was truly extraordinary. The virility and sensuality of his work have been undiminished by time, though the intensity of his religious devotion may be more difficult to appreciate in a secular world not accustomed to equating the flesh and the spirit as closely as Rubens did in his day.

Bibliography

Belkin, Kristin Lohse. Rubens. London: Phaidon Press, 1998. Belkin places Rubens’s life and art within the context of the Netherlands in the seventeenth century.

Donovan, Fiona. Rubens and England. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004. Donovan explores the political connections between Rubens and the Stuart court of England.

Gritsay, Natalya, et al. Peter Paul Rubens: A Touch of Brilliance. New York: Prestel, 2003. A collection of essays about Rubens written by experts in Flemish art, describing the development of some of the artist’s works, such as Descent from the Cross, the Medici cycle, and the ceiling of the Banqueting House in Whitehall.

Logan, Anne-Marie. Peter Paul Rubens: The Drawings. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004. Published to accompany an exhibit of Rubens’s drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the book includes reproductions of more than one hundred of Rubens’s finest drawings from public and private collections around the world. Essays provide an overview of Rubens’s career as a draftsman and discuss the drawings’ functions as preparatory studies for paintings, sculpture, architecture, prints, and book illustrations.

Martin, John R., comp. Rubens: The Antwerp Altarpieces. New York: W. W. Norton, 1969. A thorough, copiously illustrated (in black and white) study of Rubens’s great triptychs, The Elevation of the Cross and Descent from the Cross. Martin includes an informative introduction; contemporary documents; important essays by distinguished artists, critics, biographers, and historians; and a bibliography of books and articles.

Oppenheimer, Paul. Rubens: A Portrait. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002. Oppenheimer recounts the life of Rubens, portraying him not only as a talented painted but also as an intellectual with a unique concept of beauty.

Rubens, Peter Paul, and Arnauld Brejon de Lavergnée. Rubens. Ghent, Belgium: Snoeck, 2004. A comprehensive biography of the artist, published in conjunction with an exhibition of Rubens’s work at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Lille, France. The book contains reproductions of more than 160 paintings, sketches, drawings, and tapestries created by Rubens.

Wedgwood, C. V. The World of Rubens, 1577-1640. New York: Time-Life Books, 1967. One of the most comprehensive introductions to Rubens’s life and work by one of the most distinguished historians of the seventeenth century. Covers his years in Italy, his diplomatic career, and more, and there is no better volume to consult for a sense of his place in history. A chronology of the artists of the time and an annotated bibliography and index make this an indispensable study.