Rubens, Peter Paul

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Peter Paul Rubens

1577–1640

Painter
Diplomat
Draftsman

Cultivated Upbringing.

Peter Paul Rubens, the greatest seventeenth-century Flemish artist, came from an important family in the port city of Antwerp. His father, however, was a Protestant and at the time of Peter Paul's birth, the family was living in exile in Germany. Rubens spent the first nine years of his life in Cologne and the small town of Siegen, before his father died and his mother returned with the family to Antwerp. At the time of the family's arrival there, war between the Netherlands' provinces and Spain was underway, and the family soon converted to Catholicism, since Antwerp was quickly becoming a bastion of Spanish power in the region. Antwerp, which had for much of the sixteenth century been one of Northern Europe's most important centers of trade, was just beginning to enter into a period of decline. Eventually, the Dutch provinces to the north were to cut off the city's access to the sea. But in Rubens' youth and for most of his life, the town still retained an aura of being one of the most brilliant humanistic centers in Europe. The artist was exposed to some of the greatest thinkers of the age, including the ideas of the philosopher Justus Lipsius as well as the intensely pious thinkers of the Catholic Reformation. As a member of the ruling class at Antwerp, he was schooled in the Classics and prepared for a life as a scholar and diplomat. He came to learn four languages (Dutch, French, Italian, and Latin) and was conversant in most of the philosophical, scientific, and theological issues of the day. He undertook artistic instruction, and in 1598 he was admitted into the city's painter's guild. By 1600, he had decided to travel to Italy, where he accepted employment as an artist in the court of the Gonzaga dukes at Mantua.

Italian Insights.

Rubens' Mantuan patron was very often away from his court, and thus the artist had relative freedom to travel throughout Italy, studying the art of the High Renaissance as well as the innovations that the peninsula's Baroque painters were making at the time. Mantua, too, had long had a distinguished history as a center of Renaissance art, and from there Rubens was to travel first in northern Italy, visiting Venice and then eventually making his way to Rome. In the ancient city, Rubens came to study the works of Michelangelo, and their heavily muscled forms were to leave a definite impression on his later works. In addition to the High Renaissance masters, Rubens also came to study classical sculpture. Returning to Mantua, Rubens' patron asked him to travel to Spain in 1603 on a diplomatic mission. While there, he painted several works that were to influence the development of later Spanish artists, most notably Velázquez. Eventually, he returned to Italy, where he stayed for another few years, traveling again to Rome and working for a time in Genoa. During this second visit to the church's capital, he may have also seen the masterpieces of Caravaggio and Carracci that had recently been completed, although no direct evidence ties the artist to these works.

Return to Antwerp.

Although Rome was the greatest artistic center of the age, Rubens was to return to his native Antwerp in 1608. There he was to undertake a number of religious commissions for churches in the city. During the previous decades, Antwerp's religious institutions had suffered attacks by Calvinists and Anabaptists interested in purging the town of its religious art. As the city's Catholic future seemed assured, Antwerp's citizens and religious institutions began to commission numerous altarpieces and religious paintings to restore luster to their religious buildings. Rubens responded to these demands by creating a style notable for its sense of drama, monumental scale, and swift brush strokes that suggested movement and emotional spirituality. By the 1620s, he presided over a large studio where numerous assistants executed works based upon his plans. Many of the paintings that today bear his name were only "finished" by the great master, but the artist's conception still manages to shine through even the most mundane of the works his studio turned out. Intensely restless and intellectually voracious, visitors to the artist's studio were often astonished at the way in which the artist conducted four or five tasks simultaneously. As a classically trained scholar and a member of the Antwerp elite, the artist moved relatively freely in courts throughout Europe. He painted works for King Charles I of England and for Philip III and Philip IV of Spain. All three of these kings conferred noble titles on Rubens. His most monumental courtly undertakings, though, were the series of enormous canvases he painted for Marie de' Medici of France. These paintings glorified the queen-regent's life in canvases that were larger than life. She so admired these works that she tried to convince Rubens to undertake a second cycle that might treat the life of her deceased husband, Henry IV. But Rubens, ever shrewd financially, refused because of previous problems with payments. The relationship between the artist and queen continued over the years to be cordial, and when Marie de' Medici was forced into exile in the 1630s, she spent time living as a member of Rubens' household. By this time, Rubens' fortunes were assured, and he now spent a great deal of his leisure at his two country estates. Highly intelligent and driven to work, the artist was also a family man whose two marriages were happy ones, as evidenced in the loving portraits that the artist made of both his wives.