Peter Paul Rubens: A Guide to Rubens’ Life and Art

Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) was a Flemish artist who was the most prestigious painter of the Flemish Baroque style of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Through his accentuation of color, sensuality, and movement, he became an influential leader of the Catholic Counter-Reformation style of painting.

Rubens painted portraits, landscapes, and altarpieces admired by art collectors and nobility across Europe, but he was most famous for his history paintings of religious and mythological subjects. In addition to his artistic prowess, Ruben was also a diplomat, a humanist scholar, and ran the most prominent painter's workshop in Europe at the time.

Rubens was a prolific artist who honed his craft throughout Europe but produced most of his masterpieces while at his home studio in Antwerp, Belgium.

• Early years: Rubens was born in Siegen, Westphalia (present-day Germany) on June 28th, 1577, to a Catholic mother, Maria Pypelinckx, and a Calvinist father, Jan Rubens. As a young boy, he demonstrated a talent for drawing while attending school in Cologne, but at age 12—two years after his father’s death—his mother moved him to Antwerp in the Spanish Netherlands (present-day Belgium). At age 14, Rubens became an apprentice to landscape painter Tobias Verhaecht, but he moved on after a year to study under the more acclaimed history and portrait painter, Adam van Noort. After a four-year stint under van Noort, Rubens became the senior apprentice to Otto van Veen, a classically educated humanist scholar and the most talented painter in Antwerp.
• Educational travels: In 1600, Rubens traveled abroad to Venice, Italy, where he viewed paintings from masters like Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese. In Venice, Rubens made social connections who introduced him to Vincenzo Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua. Gonzaga hired Rubens to be his official court painter and funded trips for Ruben to visit Spain and Italy to study classical pieces of art. Under the patronage of Gonzaga, Rubens painted his original works and numerous copies of paintings from Italian masters like Caravaggio, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael.
• Return to Antwerp: Rubens left Italy in October of 1608 after receiving word his mother Maria was gravely ill, but by the time he arrived back in Antwerp, she had already died. He decided to stay in Antwerp and, within a year, became the court painter for Archduke Albert VII and Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia. They permitted Rubens to base his studio in Antwerp instead of their court in Brussels and allowed Rubens to paint for other clients. Around the same time, Rubens fell in love and married 18-year-old Isabella Brant, who he painted alongside himself in his 1609 self-portrait, The Honeysuckle Bower.
• Studio commissions: Between 1610-1620, Rubens and his studio assistants produced numerous altarpieces for Roman Catholic churches, most notably The Elevation of the Cross and The Descent from the Cross. During these years, Rubens's studio workshop flourished with talented students, including future leading court painter of England, Anthony van Dyck. Rubens also frequently collaborated with Flemish animal painter Frans Snyders and flower still-life specialist Jan Brueghel the Elder.
• Diplomatic missions: During this decade, Rubens ventured on numerous diplomatic missions through France, Spain, and England. Rubens was knighted twice, first by Philip IV of Spain in 1624 and again by Charles I of England in 1630, for his efforts to keep the peace between nations.
• Later years: Between 1630-1640, Rubens followed more personal artistic projects while commissioning large works for foreign patrons, like the ceiling paintings for the Banqueting House at the Palace of Whitehall. Rubens died as a result of chronic gout on May 30th, 1640.

Below are five characteristics that define Rubens's works:

1. 1. Bold strokes: Rubens painted with bold, brisk brushstrokes that exemplified his passion and emphasized the drama in each of his works. Despite this style, Rubens still attended to detail when needed.
2. 2. Impasto: In his portraits, Rubens often used impasto—a method of applying paint thickly to make it stand out from a surface—to accentuate his colors to make subjects appear more realistic.
3. 3. Baroque style: Rubens followed the Baroque style by choosing dramatic scenes with bold color choices, great movement, and high contrast of light and darkness to draw the viewer's eye to specific places.
4. 4. Dramatic positions: Rubens often painted the human body dramatically with contorted postures, nude subjects, and people draped in striking clothing.
5. 5. Religious and mythological subjects: Rubens was famous for his religious paintings commissioned by the Roman Catholic Church and wealthy, religious patrons. He also painted mythological subjects, which gave him more freedom to depict the human body less traditionally.

The following paintings exemplify the characteristics that made Rubens a master of religious, mythological, and allegorical subjects.

1. 1. The Elevation of the Cross (1610-1611): This monumental triptych is Rubens's first major altarpiece and draws influence from master painters like Caravaggio, Michelangelo, and Tintoretto. Rubens portrays Jesus Christ on the cross shortly before crucifixion as a group of muscular men struggle to lift the cross upwards. Today, you can find The Elevation of the Cross in the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp.
2. 2. The Descent from the Cross (1612-1614): The second of two triptych altarpieces that Ruben painted for the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp, this masterpiece depicts the removal of Jesus Christ from the cross post-crucifixion. Like its counterpart, The Elevation of the Cross, this work demonstrates Rubens's fondness to highlight the Catholic Counter-Reformation movement in his paintings.
3. 3. Massacre of the Innocents (1611-1612): This painting portrays the biblical massacre of male infants in Bethlehem as told in the Gospel of Matthew. Rubens—who later painted a second version of this scene in 1636—hoped to make a statement about the inhumanity of violence and war in this work, which shows a gruesome scene of muscular men killing infant children as their mothers try to interfere. Massacre of the Innocents was briefly located at the National Gallery in London before finding its current home in the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.
4. 4. Prometheus Bound (1611-1612): Rubens based this painting on Aeschylus’s Greek play of the same name and depicted Zeus's punishment of the Titan Prometheus, who defied Zeus by sharing the secret of fire with men. In the painting, a gigantic eagle uses its beak to rip open Prometheus's torso while simultaneously gouging Prometheus's eye with its talons. Rubens collaborated on this piece with his friend and acclaimed animal painter, Frans Snyder, who painted the eagle. Prometheus Bound resides in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

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