RUBENS, PETER PAUL (1577–1640)

RUBENS, PETER PAUL (1577–1640), Flemish painter. Peter Paul Rubens became the most influential northern artist in seventeenth-century Europe. His prolific production included religious, historical, and mythological paintings as well as landscapes and portraits. In his idealized figural paintings Rubens brought the artistic traditions of the Netherlands, early modern Italy, and classical antiquity into an unprecedented harmonious synthesis.

BIOGRAPHY AND DEVELOPMENT

Rubens received his professional training in Antwerp, the art center of northern Europe, where his most influential teacher was the learned Otto van Veen. Stylistically, Rubens's works before about 1600 resemble his generalized forms. From 1600 to 1608 Rubens lived in Italy, where the stylistic diversity of his production testifies to his intense viewing of classical remains and works by Renaissance and contemporary artists (for example, Michelangelo and Titian, Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci). He also successfully pursued a professional career, working as court painter to the duke of Mantua, but also portraying nobility in Genoa and painting altarpieces in Rome (such as the prestigious commission for Sta. Maria in Valicella).

In 1608 Rubens hurried back to Antwerp at the belated news of his mother's fatal illness. He remained there, living in a splendid house that accommodated a large library, extensive art collection, and a spacious studio. Stylistically, Rubens shifted to a less individualized technique with smooth surfaces, clear contours, and local colors. This style looked more traditional to local patrons and also proved accessible to the studio assistants who helped with the execution of various paintings. With studio help Rubens carried out extensive commissions as court painter to the regents of the Southern Netherlands, Archduke Albert and Archduchess Isabella, and for other patrons in the Southern Netherlands, Spain, France, England, Germany, and Italy. An allegory about Europe's plight, The Horrors of War (1638; Florence, Pitti Museum), exemplifies how Rubens increasingly loosened his paint technique, which enabled him to suggest optical effects of soft light and atmospheric conditions.

During his last decade Rubens resided half of each year at his country house. There he painted more landscapes, such as the panoramic, light-filled Landscape with Château Steen, based on his own estate (circa 1631; London, National Gallery).

WORKING METHOD

The artist rightly regarded an ability to work on a huge scale as his special talent. "I confess I am by natural instinct better fitted to execute very large works than small curiosities" (letter, 13 September 1621). Yet despite this preference for a life-size or larger scale, Rubens believed in correlating subject matter with size. "As for the subject, it would be best to choose it according to the size of the picture" (letter, 25 July 1637).

The sensual impact of huge rippling forms and coloristic richness camouflages the intellectual component in works by this exceptionally erudite artist, who was respected as an equal by other scholars. Rubens's learning and intelligence are especially evident in his choice and interpretation of literary subjects for paintings, tapestries, and the title pages he designed in his free time for the Plantin-Moretus publishing house in exchange for books.

Rubens's deep familiarity with classical literature is matched by his intimate knowledge of classical art. Quotations from classical authors fit seamlessly into the content of letters written in Italian, French, or Flemish, and probably no other artist so frequently quoted or paraphrased figures from classical and early modern art, subtly using the associations that clung to the borrowing to amplify the meanings of his own works.

Some paintings are entirely autograph, such as Pelzchen (The fur coat; circa 1638; Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum), which portrays his young second wife as Venus. By contrast, pupils and assistants executed all or part of many large-scale paintings (for example, Medici cycle, circa 1622–1625; Louvre, Paris, originally Luxembourg Palace). For practical reasons, and to raise the status of his profession, Rubens organized his workshop to separate invention from much of the manual execution. He planned works by making compositional drawings and studies from the model, but also, untraditionally, through oil sketches on oak panels. The oil sketches served as both compositional models for assistants and colorful demonstration pieces for patrons. No previous artist had given such sketches a large role in the working process. Rubens often retouched finished paintings so that weaker execution by studio assistants did not spoil his invention, for example, in The Miracles of St. Ignatius (1617–1618; Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum). Both sketch and altarpiece originally hung in St. Charles Borromeo, the new Jesuit church in Antwerp. Although Rubens never worked as a sculptor, he furnished designs for sculptures, such as the reliefs on the facade of St. Charles Borromeo. Victory-like angels transform its doorway into a triumphal arch through which one originally entered an interior whose decoration included thirty-nine ceiling paintings by Rubens and his studio as well as two altarpieces in sculptural frames of Rubens's own design. The ensemble exemplified his persuasiveness as a propagandist for the Roman Catholic Church.

For economic and perhaps aesthetic reasons Rubens also worked extensively with collaborators who painted the landscapes and still-life portions in various works, such as the eagle in Prometheus (finished by 1618; Philadelphia Museum of Art) by the animal specialist Frans Snyders. When painting figures in landscapes and interiors by Jan Bruegel the Elder, however, Rubens adjusted his sweeping style to his older friend's miniaturized, delicate approach (as in The Earthly Paradise, circa 1625; The Hague, Mauritshuis).

Printmakers, among them Lucas Vorsterman, also played an important role because prints made after the paintings circulated Rubens's "inventions" through and beyond Europe.

SOCIAL HONORS

Ennobled in 1624 for his artistic achievements, Rubens received knighthood in 1630 from Charles I of England and in 1631 from Philip IV of Spain. Although he had carried out extensive commissions for both kings (ceiling paintings in Whitehall Banqueting House, London, circa 1629–1634; series for a hunting lodge, Torre de la Parada, circa 1636–1638, now in Madrid, Prado), they knighted Rubens explicitly for his political activity as a diplomat who worked to promote peace in Europe.

See also Bruegel Family ; Caravaggio and Caravaggism ; Michelangelo Buonarroti ; Netherlands, Art in the ; Titian (Tiziano Vecelli) .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Source

Magurn, Ruth Saunders, trans. and ed. The Letters of Peter Paul Rubens. Cambridge, Mass., 1955. Annotated English translations of selected letters.

Secondary Sources

Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard. London, Oxford, and New York, 1968–. A thematically organized series in English with volumes by different authors.

Held, Julius S. The Oil Sketches of Peter Paul Rubens: A Critical Catalogue. Princeton, 1982. General essays about the oil sketches followed by catalogue entries discussing each known individual sketch.

White, Christopher. Peter Paul Rubens: Man and Artist. New Haven and London, 1987.

Zirka Zaremba Filipczak