Peter Paul Rubens

Early life

Rubens was born 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 decided to study 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.^[6] 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 Pypelinckx, who came from a prominent family originally from Kuringen, near Hasselt. A large portion of the nobility and bourgeoisie in the Southern 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 iconoclasic fury, referred to in Dutch as the Beeldenstorm (pronounced [ˈbeːldə(n)ˌstɔr(ə)m]) 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.^[7] 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 (Jan Baptist (1562–1600), Blandina (1564–1606), Clara (1565–1580) and Hendrik (1567–1583)), 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 Habsburg 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 had an affair with Anna of Saxony, which resulted in a pregnancy in 1571.^[8] Rubens was imprisoned in Dillenburg Castle and under threat of execution for his transgression. The illegitimate daughter, Christina of Dietz, was born on 22 August 1571.^[9]

Thanks to the repeated pleas of his wife and by paying 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.^[10] 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.^[9] The widow Maria Pypelinckx returned with the rest of the family (i.e. Blandina, Philip and Peter Paul) to Antwerp in 1590, where they moved into a house on the Kloosterstraat.^[9]

Apprenticeship

Until his death in 1587, father Jan 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 go to work, 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.^[11] Acting on his ambition to pursue a career as an artist, he began an apprenticeship with the landscape painter Tobias Verhaecht in 1592.^[9] Verhaecht was married to Suzanna van Mockenborch, who was a granddaughter of Peter Paul Rubens' stepfather Jan de Landmetere and also a cousin of his mother.^[12] 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.^[11] 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, Da Vinci, Raphael and Titian and had created upon their return home artworks that reflected their engagement with these Italian innovations. Rubens' apprenticeship with van Noort lasted about four years during which he improved his handling of figures and faces.^[13]

He subsequently studied with another Romanist painter, Otto van Veen.^[14] 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 Habsburg Netherlands.^[13] Van Veen instilled in Rubens the ideal of the 'pictor doctus' (learned painter), who understands that painting requires not only practice, but also on 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.^[15] 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.^[16] He seems to have remained an assistant in van Veen's after becoming and independent master. His works from this period, such as the Adam and Eve (Rubenshuis, Antwerp, c. 1599) and the Battle of the Amazons (Bildergalerie, Potsdam-Sanssouci) show the influence of his master van Veen.^[11] This style was characterised by a pronounced Italianate mannerism constrained by the Antwerp workshop tradition and the Italian art theory of the Renaissance.^[15]

Italy (1600–1608)

In 1600 Rubens travelled to Italy with his first pupil Deodat del Monte. They stopped first in Venice,^[17] where he saw paintings by Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto. The colouring and compositions of Veronese and Tintoretto had an immediate effect on Rubens' painting, and his later, mature style was profoundly influenced by Titian.^[18] His visit to Venice coincided with that of Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga of Mantua. It is possible that he was hired by the Duke during his stay in Venice or that Otto van Veen, who was court painter to Archdukes Albert and Isabella, joint governors of Flanders, had introduced Rubens to the Duke during the latter's visit to the Brussels court. The small duchy of Mantua was renowned as an art centre and the Duke as an avid art collector with a rich collection of Italian masters. Rubens mainly painted portraits of the Duke's family and also copied the famous Renaissance paintings in the Duke's collection.^[11] With financial support from the Duke, Rubens travelled to Rome by way of Florence in 1601. There, he studied classical Greek and Roman art and copied works of the Italian masters. The Hellenistic sculpture Laocoön and His Sons was especially influential on him, as was the art of Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci.^[19]

Rubens came in Rome also under the spell of the recent, highly naturalistic paintings by Caravaggio. He later made a copy of Caravaggio's Entombment of Christ and recommended his patron, the Duke of Mantua, to buy The Death of the Virgin (Louvre).^[20] He remained a strong supporter of Caravaggio's art as shown by his important role in the acquisition of The Madonna of the Rosary (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) for the St. Paul's Church in Antwerp after he had returned home.^[21] During this first stay in Rome, Rubens completed his first altarpiece commission, St. Helena with the True Cross for the Roman church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme.

Rubens travelled to Spain on a diplomatic mission in 1603, delivering gifts from the Gonzagas to the court of Philip III.^[22] While there, he studied the extensive collections of Raphael and Titian that had been collected by Philip II.^[23] He also painted an equestrian portrait of the Duke of Lerma during his stay (Prado, Madrid) that demonstrates the influence of works like Titian's Charles V at Mühlberg (1548; Prado, Madrid). This journey marked the first of many during his career that combined art and diplomacy.

He returned to Italy in 1604, where he remained for the next four years, first in Mantua and then in Genoa. In Genoa, Rubens painted numerous portraits, such as the Marchesa Brigida Spinola-Doria (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), and the portrait of Maria di Antonio Serra Pallavicini, in a style that influenced later paintings by Anthony van Dyck, Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough.^[24] He made drawings of the many new palaces that were going up in Genoa. These were later engraved and published in 1622 as Palazzi di Genova.

From 1606 to 1608, he was mostly in Rome when he received, with the assistance of Cardinal Jacopo Serra (the brother of Maria Pallavicini), his most important commission to date for the High Altar of the city's most fashionable new church, Santa Maria in Vallicella also known as the Chiesa Nuova. The subject was St. Gregory the Great and important local saints adoring an icon of the Virgin and Child. The first version, a single canvas (now at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Grenoble), was immediately replaced by a second version on three slate panels that permits the actual miraculous holy image of the "Santa Maria in Vallicella" to be revealed on important feast days by a removable copper cover, also painted by the artist.^[25] His brother Philip was also at the time of his second residence in Rome as a scholar. The brothers lived together on Via della Croce near Piazza di Spagna. They had thus the opportunity to share their common interest in Classical art.^[26]

Rubens's experiences in Italy continued to influence his work even after his return to Flanders. His stay in Italy had also allowed him to build a network of friendships with important figures of his time such as the scientist Galileo Galilei whom he included as the central figure in his friendship portrait he painted in Mantua known as the Self-Portrait in a Circle of Friends from Mantua. Rubens continued to correspond with many of his friends and contacts in Italian, signed his name as "Pietro Paolo Rubens", and spoke longingly of returning to the peninsula—a wish that never materialised.^[27] Rubens was a polyglot who corresponded not only in Italian and Dutch, but also in French, Spanish and Latin. His mother tongue and most commonly used idiom remained, however, the dialect of Brabant. This is demonstrated in that he wrote his most spontaneous letters in that dialect and also used it for the notes on his drawings and designs.^[15]

Antwerp (1609–1621)

Upon hearing of his mother's illness in 1608, Rubens planned his departure from Italy for Antwerp, but she died before he arrived home. His return coincided with a period of renewed prosperity in the city with the signing of the Treaty of Antwerp in April 1609, which initiated the Twelve Years' Truce. In September 1609 Rubens was appointed as court painter^[28] by Albert VII, Archduke of Austria, and Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain, sovereigns of the Habsburg Netherlands.

He received special permission to base his studio in Antwerp instead of at their court in Brussels, and to also work for other clients. He remained close to the Archduchess Isabella until her death in 1633, and was called upon as a painter and also as an ambassador and diplomat. Rubens further cemented his ties to the city when, on 3 October 1609, he married Isabella Brant, the daughter of a leading Antwerp citizen and humanist, Jan Brant.

In 1610, Rubens moved into a new house and studio that he designed. Now the Rubenshuis Museum, the Italian-influenced villa in the centre of Antwerp accommodated his workshop, where he and his apprentices made most of the paintings, and his personal art collection and library, both among the most extensive in Antwerp. During this time he built up a studio with numerous students and assistants. His most famous pupil was the young Anthony van Dyck, who soon became the leading Flemish portraitist and collaborated frequently with Rubens. He also often collaborated with the many specialists active in the city, including the animal painter Frans Snyders, who contributed the eagle to Prometheus Bound (c. 1611–12, completed by 1618), and his good friend the flower-painter Jan Brueghel the Elder.

Rubens built another house to the north of Antwerp in the polder village of Doel, "Hooghuis" (1613/1643), perhaps as an investment. The "High House" was built next to the village church.

Altarpieces such as The Raising of the Cross (1610) and The Descent from the Cross (1611–1614) for the Cathedral of Our Lady were particularly important in establishing Rubens as Flanders' leading painter shortly after his return. The Raising of the Cross, for example, demonstrates the artist's synthesis of Tintoretto's Crucifixion for the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice, Michelangelo's dynamic figures, and Rubens's own personal style. This painting has been held as a prime example of Baroque religious art.^[29]

Rubens used the production of prints and book title-pages, especially for his friend Balthasar Moretus, the owner of the large Plantin-Moretus publishing house, to extend his fame throughout Europe during this part of his career. In 1618, Rubens embarked upon a printmaking enterprise by soliciting an unusual triple privilege (an early form of copyright) to protect his designs in France, the Southern Netherlands, and United Provinces.^[30] He enlisted Lucas Vorsterman to engrave a number of his notable religious and mythological paintings, to which Rubens appended personal and professional dedications to noteworthy individuals in the Southern Netherlands, United Provinces, England, France, and Spain.^[30] With the exception of a few etchings, Rubens left the printmaking to specialists, who included Lucas Vorsterman, Paulus Pontius and Willem Panneels.^[31] He recruited a number of engravers trained by Christoffel Jegher, whom he carefully schooled in the more vigorous style he wanted. Rubens also designed the last significant woodcuts before the 19th-century revival in the technique.^[32]

Marie de' Medici Cycle and diplomatic missions (1621–1630)

In 1621, the Queen Mother of France, Marie de' Medici, commissioned Rubens to paint two large allegorical cycles celebrating her life and the life of her late husband, Henry IV, for the Luxembourg Palace in Paris. The Marie de' Medici cycle (now in the Louvre) was installed in 1625, and although he began work on the second series it was never completed.^[33] Marie was exiled from France in 1630 by her son, Louis XIII, and died in 1642 in the same house in Cologne where Rubens had lived as a child.^[34]

After the end of the Twelve Years' Truce in 1621, the Spanish Habsburg rulers entrusted Rubens with diplomatic missions.^[35] While in Paris in 1622 to discuss the Marie de' Medici cycle, Rubens engaged in clandestine information gathering activities, which at the time was an important task of diplomats. He relied on his friendship with Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc to get information on political developments in France.^[36] Between 1627 and 1630, Rubens was very active as a diplomat. He travelled between the courts of Spain and England in an attempt to bring about peace between the Catholic Spanish Netherlands and the Protestant Dutch Republic. He also made several trips to the Dutch Republic as both an artist and a diplomat.

Some members of the courts he visited did not treat him as an equal as they held that courtiers should not use their hands in any art or trade, but he was also received as an equal gentleman by many others. Rubens was raised by Philip IV of Spain to the nobility in 1624 and knighted by Charles I of England in 1630. Philip IV confirmed Rubens's status as a knight a few months later.^[37] Rubens was awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree from Cambridge University in 1629.^[38]

Rubens was in Madrid for eight months in 1628–1629. In addition to diplomatic negotiations, he executed several important works for Philip IV and private patrons. He also began a renewed study of Titian's paintings, copying numerous works including the Madrid Fall of Man (1628–29).^[39] During this stay, he befriended the court painter Diego Velázquez and the two planned to travel to Italy together the following year. Rubens, however, returned to Antwerp following the death of his mother and Velázquez made the journey without him.^[40]

His stay in Antwerp was brief, and he soon travelled on to London where he remained until April 1630. An important work from this period is the Allegory of Peace and War (1629; National Gallery, London).^[41] It illustrates the artist's lively concern for peace, and was given to Charles I as a gift.

While Rubens's international reputation with collectors and nobility abroad continued to grow during this decade, he and his workshop also continued to paint monumental paintings for local patrons in Antwerp. The Assumption of the Virgin Mary (1625–26) for the Cathedral of Antwerp is one prominent example.

Last decade (1630–1640)

Rubens's last decade was spent in and around Antwerp. Major works for foreign patrons still occupied him, such as the ceiling paintings for the Banqueting House at Inigo Jones's Palace of Whitehall, but he also explored more personal artistic directions.

In 1630, four years after the death of his first wife Isabella, the 53-year-old painter married her niece, the 16-year-old Helena Fourment. Hélène inspired the voluptuous figures in many of his paintings from the 1630s, including The Feast of Venus (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), The Three Graces and The Judgement of Paris (both Prado, Madrid). In the latter painting, which was made for the Spanish court, the artist's young wife was recognised by viewers in the figure of Venus. In an intimate portrait of her, Helena Fourment in a Fur Wrap, also known as Het Pelsken, Rubens's wife is even partially modelled after classical sculptures of the Venus Pudica, such as the Medici Venus.

In 1635, Rubens bought an estate outside Antwerp, the Steen, where he spent much of his time. Landscapes, such as his A View of Het Steen in the Early Morning (National Gallery, London) and Farmers Returning from the Fields (Pitti Gallery, Florence), reflect the more personal nature of many of his later works. He also drew upon the Netherlandish traditions of Pieter Bruegel the Elder for inspiration in later works like Feasting and dancing peasants (c. 1630; Louvre, Paris).

Death

Rubens died from heart failure as a result of his chronic gout on 30 May 1640. He was interred in the Saint James' Church in Antwerp. A burial chapel for the artist and his family was built in the church. Construction on the chapel started in 1642 and was completed in 1650 when Cornelis van Mildert (the son of Rubens's friend, the sculptor Johannes van Mildert) delivered the altarstone. The chapel is a marble altar portico with two columns framing the altarpiece of the Virgin and child with saints painted by Rubens himself. The painting expresses the basic tenets of the Counter Reformation through the figures of the Virgin and saints. In the upper niche of the retable is a marble statue depicting the Virgin as the Mater Dolorosa whose heart is pierced by a sword, which was likely sculpted by Lucas Faydherbe, a pupil of Rubens. The remains of Rubens's second wife Helena Fourment and two of her children (one of whom was fathered by Rubens) were later also laid to rest in the chapel. Over the coming centuries about 80 descendants from the Rubens family were interred in the chapel.^[42]

At the request of canon van Parijs, Rubens's epitaph, written in Latin by his friend Gaspar Gevartius, was chiselled on the chapel floor. In the tradition of the Renaissance, Rubens is compared in the epitaph to Apelles, the most famous painter of Greek Antiquity.^[43][44]

Workshop

Paintings from Rubens's workshop can be divided into three categories: those he painted by himself, those he painted in part (mainly hands and faces), and copies supervised from his drawings or oil sketches. He had, as was usual at the time, a large workshop with many apprentices and students. It has not always been possible to identify who were Rubens's pupils and assistants since as a court painter Rubens was not required to register his pupils with the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke. About 20 pupils or assistants of Rubens have been identified, with various levels of evidence to include them as such. It is also not clear from surviving records whether a particular person was a pupil or assistant in Rubens's workshop or was an artist who was an independent master collaborating on specific works with Rubens. The unknown Jacob Moerman was registered as his pupil while Willem Panneels and Justus van Egmont were registered in the Guild's records as Rubens's assistants. Anthony van Dyck worked in Rubens's workshop after training with Hendrick van Balen in Antwerp. Other artists linked to the Rubens's workshop as pupils, assistants or collaborators are Abraham van Diepenbeeck, Lucas Faydherbe, Lucas Franchoys the Younger, Nicolaas van der Horst, Frans Luycx, Peter van Mol, Deodat del Monte, Cornelis Schut, Erasmus Quellinus the Younger, Pieter Soutman, David Teniers the Elder, Frans Wouters, Jan Thomas van Ieperen, Theodoor van Thulden and Victor Wolfvoet (II).^[48]

He also often sub-contracted elements such as animals, landscapes or still-lifes in large compositions to specialists such as animal painters Frans Snyders and Paul de Vos, or other artists such as Jacob Jordaens. One of his most frequent collaborators was Jan Brueghel the Elder.