Peter Paul Rubens
The powerhouse of the Baroque.
Rubens ran a large workshop in Antwerp and was also a diplomat. His paintings are full of movement, flesh and colour.
Peter Paul Rubens was born on 28 June 1577 in Siegen in Germany, where his Protestant father had fled from Antwerp. After his father's death his mother moved back to Antwerp with the children, and Peter Paul grew up a Catholic. He received a classical education and served for a time as a page to a countess before being apprenticed to several painters. He became a master in the painters' guild in 1598.
In 1600 he travelled to Italy, where he stayed for eight years. He worked for the Duke of Mantua and studied ancient sculpture, Michelangelo, Titian and Caravaggio. After returning home in 1608 he became court painter to the Spanish governors in Brussels but was allowed to remain in Antwerp. There he built a large house with a studio, which is now a museum. In 1609 he married Isabella Brant. His breakthrough came with two huge altarpieces for Antwerp Cathedral, The Elevation of the Cross and The Descent from the Cross, where they still remain.
Rubens ran one of the largest workshops in Europe. He usually made the oil sketches himself, and assistants and specialists, sometimes for animals or landscapes, painted the large canvases, which he then finished. His output was therefore enormous. He painted a cycle of 24 large canvases on the life of Queen Marie de' Medici, now in the Louvre, and the ceiling of the Banqueting House in London, which is still in place. He was also a diplomat. He negotiated for peace between Spain and England and was knighted by Charles I of England.
His style is full of movement, diagonals and strong colours. The bodies are voluptuous, the flesh glows and the fabrics billow. Isabella Brant died in 1626, and in 1630 he married the sixteen-year-old Helena Fourment. He painted her many times, among them wrapped in a fur cloak in a painting now in Vienna. He spent much of his last years at a country estate, where he painted landscapes. He died in Antwerp in 1640.
Rubens is the greatest name of the northern European Baroque. His influence extended to Van Dyck, Watteau, Delacroix and Renoir. The word “Rubenesque” is still used of full-figured female bodies.