Peter Paul Rubens
Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish artist and diplomat. He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque tradition. Rubens's highly charged compositions reference erudite aspects of classical and Christian history. His unique and immensely popular Baroque style emphasised movement, colour, and sensuality, which followed the immediate, dramatic artistic style promoted in the Counter-Reformation. Rubens was a painter producing altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. He was also a prolific designer of cartoons for the Flemish tapestry workshops and of frontispieces for the publishers in Antwerp.
Rubens was born and raised in the Holy Roman Empire to parents who were refugees from Antwerp in the Duchy of Brabant in the Spanish Netherlands and moved to Antwerp at about 12. In addition to running a large workshop in Antwerp that produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically educated humanist scholar and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV of Spain and Charles I of England. Rubens was a prolific artist. The catalogue of his works by Michael Jaffé lists 1,403 pieces, excluding numerous copies made in his workshop.
His commissioned works were mostly history paintings, which included religious and mythological subjects, and hunt scenes. He painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house. He also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the royal entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand of Austria in 1635. He wrote a book with illustrations of the palaces in Genoa, which was published in 1622 as Palazzi di Genova. The book was influential in spreading the Genoese palace style in Northern Europe. Rubens was an avid art collector and had one of the largest collections of art and books in Antwerp. He was also an art dealer and is known to have sold important art objects to George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham.
He was one of the last major artists to make consistent use of wooden panels as a support medium, even for very large works, but used canvas as well, especially when the work needed to be sent a long distance. For altarpieces, he sometimes painted on slate to reduce reflection problems.
Life
Early life
Peter Paul Rubens was born on 28 June 1577 in Siegen, Nassau, to Jan Rubens and Maria Pypelincks. His father's family were long-time residents of Antwerp, tracing their lineage there back to 1350. Records show that a certain Arnold Rubens bought 'a house with court' in the Gasthuisstraat in Antwerp in 1396. The Rubens family belonged to the well-to-do bourgeois class, and its members were known to operate grocery shops and pharmacies.Jan Rubens studied law and lived from 1556 to 1562 in the main cities of Italy to further his studies. He was awarded the degree of doctor of ecclesiastical and civil law by the Sapienza University in Rome. Upon his return to Antwerp, he became a lawyer and held the office of alderman in Antwerp from 1562 to 1568. Jan Rubens married Maria Pypelincks, who came from a prominent family originally from Kuringen, near Hasselt.
A large portion of the nobility and bourgeoisie in the Spanish Netherlands at the time sided with the Reformation and Jan Rubens also converted to Calvinism. In 1566 the Low Countries were the victim of the iconoclastic fury, referred to in Dutch as the Beeldenstorm during which Catholic art and many forms of church fittings and decoration were destroyed in unofficial or mob actions by Calvinist Protestant crowds as part of the Protestant Reformation. The ruler of the Low Countries—the Catholic Spanish king Philip II—reacted to the unrest by ordering the severe repression of the followers of the Reformation. In 1568, the Rubens family, with two boys and two girls, Blandina, Clara and Hendrik ), fled to Cologne. As Calvinists, they feared persecution in their homeland during the harsh rule of the Duke of Alba, who, as the Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, was responsible for implementing the harsh repression.
Jan Rubens became in 1570 the legal adviser of Anna of Saxony, the second wife of William I of Orange who at the time lived in Cologne. She later moved to Siegen about 90 kilometres from Cologne. Jan Rubens would visit her there while his family remained in Cologne. He and Anna of Saxony had an affair, which resulted in a pregnancy in 1571. Rubens was imprisoned in Dillenburg Castle and faced the threat of execution for his transgression. The adulterers' daughter, Christina of Dietz, was born on 22 August 1571.
Upon the repeated pleas of his wife and the payment of a bail bond of 6,000 thalers, Jan Rubens was permitted to leave prison after two years. The conditions of his release were a ban on practising as a lawyer and the obligation to take up residence in Siegen where his movements would be supervised. This put the rest of the family, who had joined Jan in Siegen, in financial difficulty. During this period two sons were born: Philip in 1574, followed in 1577 by Peter Paul who, although likely born in Siegen, was reportedly baptised in Cologne. Anna of Saxony died in 1577. The travel ban imposed on Jan Rubens was lifted in 1578 on condition that he not settle in the Prince of Orange's possessions nor in the hereditary dominions of the Low Countries and maintain the bail bond of 6,000 thalers as security. He was allowed to leave his place of exile in Siegen and to move the Rubens family to Cologne. While in Siegen, the family had of necessity belonged to the Lutheran Church in Cologne. The family now reconverted to Catholicism. The eldest son, Jan Baptist, who may also have been an artist, left for Italy in 1586. Jan Rubens died in 1587 and was buried in Cologne's St. Peter's Church, a Catholic church. In 1590 the widowed Maria Pypelinckx returned with the rest of the family to Antwerp, where they moved into a house on the Kloosterstraat.
Apprenticeship
Until his death in 1587, Jan Rubens had been intensively involved in his sons' education. Peter Paul and his older brother Philip received a humanist education in Cologne which they continued after their move to Antwerp. They studied at the Latin school of Rombout Verdonck in Antwerp, where they studied Latin and classical literature. Philip later became a prominent antiquarian, librarian and philologist but died young. In 1590, the brothers had to interrupt their schooling and start working, in order to contribute financially to their sister Blandina's dowry.While his brother Philip would continue with his humanistic and scholarly education while working as a private teacher, Peter Paul first took up a position as a page to the Countess Marguerite de Ligne-Arenberg, whose father-in-law had been the governor general of the Spanish Netherlands. The countess was the widow of Count Philippe de Lalaing and probably lived in Oudenaarde. Even though intellectually and temperamentally suited for a career as a courtier, Rubens had from a young age been attracted by the woodblock prints of Hans Holbein the Younger and Tobias Stimmer, which he had diligently copied, along with Marcantonio Raimondi's engravings after Raphael. Acting on his ambition to pursue a career as an artist, he began an apprenticeship with the landscape painter Tobias Verhaecht in 1592. Verhaecht was married to Suzanna van Mockenborch, who was a granddaughter of Peter Paul Rubens's stepfather Jan de Landmetere and also a cousin of his mother. This family connection possibly explains the choice for Verhaecht as his first master.
Rubens left Verhaecht's workshop after about one year as he wished to study history painting rather than landscape painting. He then continued his studies with one of the city's leading painters of the time, the artist Adam van Noort. Van Noort was a so-called Romanist, a term used to denote artists who had travelled from the Low Countries to Rome to study the work of leading Italian artists of the period such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Titian and had created upon their return home artworks that reflected their engagement with these Italian innovations. Rubens's apprenticeship with van Noort lasted about four years during which he improved his handling of figures and faces.
He subsequently studied with another Romanist painter, Otto van Veen. Van Veen offered Rubens the intellectual and artistic stimulation that suited his temperament. Van Veen had spent five years in Italy and was an accomplished portraitist and had a broad Humanist education. He knew Spanish royalty and had received portrait commissions as a court painter to Albert VII, Archduke of Austria and Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain, the sovereigns of the Spanish Netherlands. Van Veen instilled in Rubens the ideal of the 'pictor doctus', who understands that painting requires not only practice, but also a knowledge of art theory, Classical art and literature, and the masters of the Italian Renaissance. He also introduced Rubens to the 'code of conduct' which court painters needed to respect to become successful. Rubens completed his apprenticeship with van Veen in 1598, the year he entered the Guild of St. Luke as an independent master. As an independent master, he was allowed to take commissions and train apprentices. His first pupil was Deodat del Monte who would later accompany him on his trip to Italy. He seems to have remained an assistant in van Veen's studio after becoming an independent master. His works from this period, such as the
Adam and Eve and the Battle of the Amazons show the influence of his master van Veen. This style was characterised by a pronounced Italianate mannerism constrained by the Antwerp workshop tradition and the Italian art theory of the Renaissance.