Biografías / Biographies
Pedro Pablo Rubens o Pieter Paul Rubens

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Las obras pintadas por Rubens en la década de 1610 todavía presentan una significativa dependencia de la tradición flamenca, aunque las novedades aprendidas en Italia empezarán a tomar fuerza con el paso del tiempo, como podemos observar en el ciclo pintado para los Jesuitas de Amberes (1617-1621) compuesto por dos grandes lienzos de altar y 39 pinturas para las bóvedas de las galerías y las naves laterales, escenas en las que se aprecia claramente su dependencia de las decoraciones de los palacios venecianos pintados por Tiziano, Veronés o Tintoretto. Las 39 pinturas fueron realizadas por el taller, en el que Van Dyck era el principal ayudante. Y es que buena parte de los trabajos realizados por Rubens serían ejecutados por su amplio y fructífero taller ya que, como él mismo dice en 1618 a Carleton, "me encuentro tan sobrecargado de encargos para edificios públicos y colecciones particulares que me resultará imposible aceptar otros nuevos antes de que transcurran varios años". Rubens realizaba los bocetos y sus ayudantes -entre los que se contaban los mejores artistas del momento como Van Dyck, Lucas Vosterman, Paulus Pontius, Jacob Jordaens o Christoffel Jeghers- ejecutaban los trabajos siguiendo las líneas principales marcadas por el maestro, sin perder éste nunca el control sobre el resultado final del producto, ya que siempre retocaba las obras de los ayudantes antes de darlas por finalizadas. También resultará habitual su colaboración con otros artistas, entablando excelentes relaciones con sus colegas. Jan Brueghel de Velours, Paul de Vos, Lucas van Uden o Frans Snyders son algunos de los nombres que habitualmente trabajaban en igualdad de condiciones con Rubens, compartiendo la firma en los trabajos definitivos. La fama alcanzada por la pintura de Rubens rebasó las fronteras de los Países Bajos y le llegaron encargos de diferentes lugares de Europa. Estos encargos iban acompañados de distinciones y honores especiales, como los que recibió del Príncipe de Baviera o del rey Christian de Dinamarca. El primer trabajo importante para una corte extranjera llegará de París, concretamente de la reina madre doña María de Medicis. Se trata de dos ciclos de pinturas destinados a decorar el Palacio del Luxemburgo en París, uno de ellos dedicados a exaltar la memoria del difunto rey Enrique IV -tras muchas demoras no se llegó a realizar, quedando sólo bocetos y esbozos- y el otro ciclo dedicado a glorificar el reinado de María de Medicis, ciclo que se concluiría en el plazo fijado. El contrato se firmó en los primeros meses de 1622 y los veinticuatro cuadros fueron entregados con motivo de la boda por poderes entre Carlos I de Inglaterra y la princesa Enriqueta María de Borbón, en 1625. Rubens asistió a esta boda y allí conoció a un importante e influyente personaje, el duque de Buckingham, pieza fundamental en el próximo viaje que el pintor realice a tierras británicas. Antes de realizar este viaje a París, Rubens había intentado, entre 1623 y 1625, con la ayuda de un pariente residente en Holanda, negociar un tratado de paz entre Flandes y Holanda, negociación que se dio al traste ante la negativa holandesa a alcanzar la paz. Este fracaso llevó a una intensificación de las actividades militares en la zona, tomando Ambrosio de Spinola la plaza fuerte de Breda en 1625, episodio que será inmortalizado por Velázquez en Las Lanzas. Otro de los importantes ciclos realizados por Rubens en 1625 es el diseño de los tapices del Triunfo de la Eucaristía por encargo de la archiduquesa Isabel Clara Eugenia, gobernadora de los Países Bajos y una de las principales clientes del maestro flamenco. La serie estaba dedicada al convento de las Descalzas Reales de Madrid, donde hoy se pueden ver los originales. En 1626, al poco de regresar de París, Rubens y su familia abandonan Amberes ya que la ciudad sufre una epidemia de peste. Se retiran a Laeken donde poseen una casa de campo, pero Isabella fallece, dejando al pintor viudo y con dos hijos. La pérdida de la esposa le produjo un gran dolor y, posiblemente para olvidar, no dudó en participar en las misiones diplomáticas que le llevarían a España e Inglaterra con el objetivo de que ambos países alcanzaran la paz y se pusiera fin al conflicto que desangraba la economía y las vidas de un buen número de hombres y mujeres de los Países Bajos. Bien es cierto que las conversaciones para alcanzar la paz se habían llevado de manera secreta entre Rubens y Gerbier, un pintor flamenco de la confianza del duque de Buckingham, desde hacía un tiempo pero la oposición del conde-duque de Olivares a poner fin a las hostilidades acabó con estas iniciales conversaciones en papel mojado. Pero a principios del año 1628 don Ambrosio de Spinola convencía a Felipe IV para que se retomaran las conversaciones, aunque el monarca no confiara en un principio en el pintor para tan alta empresa. La llegada de Rubens a Madrid en el mes de agosto provocaría un cambio en la actitud del rey, nombrando a Rubens Secretario del Consejo de Flandes y confiándole las negociaciones con Inglaterra. La estancia del maestro flamenco en la corte española le permitió reencontrarse con la obra de Tiziano y copiar todos los cuadros que poseía la casa real hispánica, según nos narra Pacheco. Este reencuentro con el arte del veneciano permitirá que se produzca un cambio decisivo en la pintura de Rubens, abandonando las formas escultóricas de las obras anteriores para interesarse por un mundo en el que la luz y el color ocupan ahora un papel determinante. Antes de marcharse a Londres, en abril de 1629, también tuvo oportunidad de realizar algunos trabajos, como los retratos ecuestres de Felipe IV y Felipe II o la Inmaculada Concepción para el marqués de Leganés que hoy conserva el Museo del Prado. Durante esta estancia madrileña, Rubens coincidió con el joven Velázquez y fue uno de los impulsores de que el sevillano realizara su inmediato viaje a Italia para ampliar sus conocimientos artísticos. En Londres permaneció un periodo de diez meses pero penas tuvo tiempo para trabajar, a pesar de que Carlos I era un gran amante de la pintura. Recibió todo tipo de honores, entre los que se incluye un doctorado por la universidad de Cambridge, visitó la colecciones de arte y estrechó contactos con anticuarios y humanistas. Cansado de pasar tanto tiempo fuera de casa - "más que ninguna otra cosa en el mundo desearía volver a mi casa y quedarme allí para el resto de mi vida" escribió a su amigo Gevaerts- y con sus deberes diplomáticos casi resueltos -el tratado se firmaría ese mismo año de 1630- embarcó en Dover el 23 de marzo, poniendo fin a su etapa de grandes viajes, habiendo cumplido sus objetivos, tanto personales -fue nombrado caballero por los reyes de España e Inglaterra- como diplomáticos. Un vez en Amberes solicita a la archiduquesa Isabel "como única recompensa a todos mis servicios, que me eximiera de nuevas misiones y me dejara servirla desde mi propia casa. De cuantos favores me ha concedido éste ha sido el que más trabajo me costó obtener". Conseguido esto, su objetivo inmediato será encontrar esposa: "una mujer joven de un familia honrada pero burguesa, pues nadie puede intentar convencerme de que haga una boda cortesana. Me asusta el orgullo, un vicio inherente a la nobleza y en especial en aquel sexo, y por ello quiero elegir a alguien que no se avergüence de verme coger los pinceles. Y a decir verdad, me resultaría difícil cambiar el tesoro de mi libertad por los abrazos de una mujer vieja". La elegida será Hélène Fourment, de dieciséis años, hija de un próspero comerciante de sedas y tapices con el que Rubens tenía una estrecha amistad. Este matrimonio con la joven Hélène supondrá una especie de tónico para el maduro pintor, insuflándole ganas de vivir. Del matrimonio nacerán cinco hijos: Clara Johanna, Frans, Isabella Hélène, Peter Paul y Constancia Albertina, esta última nacida póstumamente. Hélène se convertirá desde ese momento en la principal modelo para el pintor, tanto para las santas como para las Venus. La felicidad conyugal que vive el artista se expresa en cuadros como el Jardín del amor del Museo del Prado o los numerosos retratos protagonizados por su esposa, algunos de ellos acompañada de sus hijos. Uno de los últimos encargos realizados por la archiduquesa Isabel Clara Eugenia será el Tríptico de San Ildefonso para la iglesia de Santiago de Coudenberg de Bruselas. La gobernadora falleció en diciembre de 1633, siendo sustituida en el cargo por el cardenal-infante don Fernando de Austria, hermano menor de Felipe IV. El Concejo de la ciudad de Amberes invitó al nuevo gobernador a que hiciera una entrada triunfal en la villa, siendo Rubens el encargado de organizar los preparativos. En los trabajos de la "Pompa Introitus Ferdinandi" participaron todos los artistas anturpienses -excepto Crayer y Van Dyck- engalanándose la ciudad con cinco arcos triunfales y cuatro tablados que fueron admirados por don Fernando el 17 de abril de 1635, en un recorrido por las calles que duró unas dos horas. Rubens entrará al servicio del nuevo gobernador y le hará un espectacular retrato ecuestre que hoy conserva el Museo del Prado. Sus últimos trabajos para las monarquías europeas estarán relacionados con la Península Ibérica y las Islas Británicas e Inglaterra. Para el rey Carlos I de Inglaterra pintó la decoración del techo de la Banqueting House en el Palacio de Whitehall de Londres, sala que estaría dedicada a exaltar el reinado del difunto Jacobo I. Para Felipe IV de España realiza una de sus decoraciones más importantes: la serie para la Torre de la Parada, pabellón de caza situado en el monte de El Pardo, las cercanías de Madrid. Se le encargaron unos 120 lienzos, de los que 63 tenían como temática la mitología mientras que los demás eran asuntos de cacería, que fueron derivados por Rubens a sus "especialistas": Paul de Vos y Peter Snayers. Los mayoría de los lienzos de la Torre de la Parada se perdieron en 1710, debido al saqueo del pabellón por parte de las tropas del archiduque Carlos durante la Guerra de Sucesión. De la decoración original sólo se conservan unos cuarenta cuadros, de los que 14 son de asunto mitológico, inspirados éstos en la "Metamorfosis" de Ovidio. Rubens se limitó a pintar los bocetos -los realizó aproximadamente en dos meses- que fueron pasados a lienzo por sus ayudantes Erasmus Quellinus, Theodor van Thulden, Jan Cossiers, Cornelis de Vos y Jacob Jordaens, retocando con sus propias manos estos trabajos antes de enviarlos a Madrid. Los ataques de gota eran cada vez más frecuentes en estos años, por lo que se vería obligado a delegar buena parte del trabajo en el taller en estos últimos tiempos. Hastiado del mundo de la corte y deseando "llevar una vida tranquila junto a mi mujer y mis hijos y no desear otra cosa en el mundo más que vivir en paz" Rubens compra el castillo de Het Steen, en las cercanías de Amberes, y pasa allí cada vez más tiempo, pintando paisajes para su propio goce y disfrute, delegando el trabajo y la organización del taller a Lucas Fayd´herbe. En una carta escrita a su buen amigo Peiresc dice "ahora hace ya tres años que, por la gracia divina, he conseguido recuperar la paz de espíritu tras renunciar a cualquier ocupación distinta a mi amada profesión (...) Me veía perdido en aquel laberinto, acosado día y noche por una sucesión sin fin de preocupaciones urgentes, lejos de casa durante largos meses y obligado a permanecer continuamente en la Corte". Curiosamente, esta última etapa de felicidad y tranquilidad será en la que pinte sus obras religiosas más violentas y crueles, como podemos observar en el Martirio de San Livinio de los Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts de Bruselas. El último trabajo realizado por Rubens sería el lienzo de Andrómeda y Perseo que conserva el Museo del Prado, obra que dejó sin terminar ya que le sorprendió la muerte mientras trabajaba en él. Rubens fallecía en su casa de Amberes el 30 de mayo de 1640, a punto de cumplir los 63 años. El Barroco había perdido al pintor que mejor interpretaría sus premisas, resultando su influencia avasalladora, tanto por la amplia cantidad de artistas que acudieron a su taller como por los grabados que se realizaron de su obra, llegando a todas las cortes europeas y convirtiéndose en pieza fundamental para el aprendizaje de los jóvenes artistas.

Biography

Flemish painter who was the greatest exponent of Baroque painting's dynamism, vitality, and sensuous exuberance. His work is a fusion of the traditions of Flemish realism with the classical tendencies of the Italian Renaissance. Though his masterpieces include portraits and landscapes, Rubens is perhaps best known for his religious and mythological compositions.

Early life

Although Rubens' father, Jan, was born a Roman Catholic, his name had appeared on a list of Calvinists as early as 1566. This accounted for the Rubens family's exile to Germany, where Peter Paul was born. Jan Rubens became a diplomatic agent and adviser to the Protestant princess Anna of Saxony (d. 1577), second wife of William the Silent, who led the resistance to Spanish rule of the Netherlands. An unfortunate pregnancy revealed the intimate extent of the relationship between this princess of the house of Orange-Nassau and Rubens' father. She obtained clemency from her husband for Jan, but he and his family were placed under house arrest at Siegen, a Nassau stronghold in Westphalia. The Rubens children were grounded in the classics by their exiled father, who was a doctor of both civil and canon law. Jan died in 1587, after he had been allowed to go to the German city of Cologne. Rubens' mother then took her four surviving children to Antwerp, where Jan had been an alderman.

Antwerp training

At the age of 10, Peter Paul was sent with his brother Philip to a Latin school in Antwerp. In 1590, shortage of money and the need to provide a dowry for his sister Blandina forced Rubens' mother to break off his formal education and send him as a page to the Countess of Lalaing. Soon tired of courtly life, Rubens was allowed to become a painter. He was sent first to his kinsman Tobias Verhaecht, a minor painter of Mannerist landscapes. Having quickly learned the rudiments of his profession, he was apprenticed for four years to an abler master, Adam van Noort, and subsequently to Otto van Veen, one of the most distinguished of the Antwerp Romanists, a group of Flemish artists who had gone to Rome to study the art of antiquity and the Italian Renaissance.

Italian period

In May 1600, with two years' seniority as a master in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke, Rubens set out with Deodatus del Monte, his constant traveling companion and first pupil, for the visual and spiritual adventure of Italy. He was offered employment by Vincenzo I Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, which duchy held one of the largest and finest collections outside the Vatican of works by Italian artists. During the eight years that Rubens was to call Vincenzo his lord, he had unmatched opportunities for fulfilling his expressed intention "to study at close quarters the works of the ancient and modern masters. . . ."

Rubens was sent to Rome (1601-02) by the duke to paint copies of pictures and to live under the protection of Cardinal Montalto. There, through Flemish connections, he obtained his first public commission, to paint three altarpieces for the crypt chapel of St Helena in Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. In Rome the Bolognese painter Annibale Carracci and his assistants were at work in the gallery of the Palazzo Farnese. Their bold scale in drawing and working methods decidedly influenced the young Rubens. He assimilated Venetian colour, light, and loose application of paint first through the works of Tintoretto, then through those of Veronese, long before he could penetrate the inward meaning of Titian's art. Rubens' copies, and his reworking of drawings, offer the most complete survey of the achievement of 16^th-century Italian art in a markedly personal revision.

In 1603 he was entrusted with his first diplomatic mission, to take costly presents from Mantua to Philip III and the Spanish court. This mission gave him a first view of the royal collections in Madrid. His resourcefulness and tact in dealing with the temperamental regular Mantuan representative to the Spanish court raised him in the duke's estimation and helped prepare him for future diplomatic missions.

The only major works he executed for Mantua were the three pictures finished in 1605 for the Jesuit Church of SS. Trinità: The Baptism of Christ (Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp), The Transfiguration (Fine Arts Museum, Nancy), and The Gonzaga Family in Adoration of the Most Holy Trinity (Ducal Palace, Mantua). In the same year he completed the Circumcision for the high altar of the Jesuit Church of Sant' Ambrogio in Genoa. Portraits of court beauties by Rubens were commissioned by the duke for the Gonzaga Gallery, of which Rubens was curator.

Toward the end of 1605, Rubens obtained leave from the Duke of Mantua to continue his studies in Rome. There he shared a house with his brother Philip, then librarian to Cardinal Ascanio Colonna, a member of one of Rome's most wealthy and powerful families. Daily contact with Philip, a brilliant student of the famed Flemish humanist and classical scholar Justus Lipsius, added zest to his personal discovery of the antique world.

In the summer of 1607 Rubens was asked to accompany the Gonzaga court to the Italian seaside resort of San Pier d'Arena, where he continued to paint with splendour portraits of the Genoese aristocracy. Chronic arrears in payment of his salary, and an ambition to establish himself as an international, rather than just a Mantuan, artist, motivated him to accept other patronage. He received the backing of the wealthy Genoese banker to the papacy, Monsignor Jacopo Serra, who was instrumental in obtaining for him the coveted commission for the painting over the high altar of the Roman Church of Santa Maria in Vallicella. He concurrently painted the altarpiece of the Adoration of the Shepherds for the Oratorian Order in Fermo.

In October 1608 his brother summoned him to their mother's deathbed in Antwerp, but she died before he could reach her. Italy had become Rubens's spiritual home (he usually signed himself Pietro Pauolo') and he considered returning for good, but his success in Antwerp was so immediate and great that he remained there, and in spite of his extensive travels later in his career he never saw Italy again.

Return to Antwerp

Soon after his mother's death Rubens was "bound with golden fetters" to the service of the Spanish Habsburg regents of Flanders. The house that he built for himself, the pride of Antwerp, was filled with paintings, statuary, cameos, coins, and jewels from Renaissance and ancient Roman Italy. He built a private pantheon to house his antiquities. His biggest commission in Flanders was for the decoration of the Jesuit Church St Charles Borromeo in Antwerp (a building he may also have had a hand in designing). He was also the master decorator for its interior and provided oil sketches as designs for the ceiling paintings, on which he was assisted by his most talented pupil, Anthony Van Dyck, and others. Almost all his work there was destroyed by fire in 1718.

Settling permanently in Flanders, Rubens in October 1609 married Isabella, daughter of Jan Brant, a leading Antwerp humanist. He became not only the court portraitist but a major religious painter. His Baroque altarpieces of The Raising of the Cross (1610) for St. Walburga's in Antwerp and the Descent from the Cross (1611-14) for Antwerp Cathedral established Rubens as the leading painter of Flanders. Because of his prestige, he was allowed to live in Antwerp, rather than in Brussels, where the Flemish court was based. Rubens' international reputation spread partly because of the large number of works produced in his workshop, which came to employ a great number of assistants and apprentices. Many of the large-scale pictures that issued from his studio were in fact painted by these assistants, though the underlying design and certain key areas of paint were done by Rubens himself. To present models of prospective large-scale paintings to clients, Rubens might also sketch out the design beforehand in tones of brown, gray, and white on a small prepared wooden panel only inches high.

The demand for Rubens's work was extraordinary, and he was able to meet it only because he ran an extremely efficient studio. It is not known how many pupils or assistants he had because as court painter he was exempt from registering them with the guild. The idea of his running a sort of picture factory has been exaggerated, but even a man of his seemingly inexhaustible intellectual and physical stamina (he habitually rose at 4 a.m.) could not carry out all the work involved in his massive output with his own hands. Rubens both collaborated with established artists ('Velvet' Brueghel, van Dyck, Jordaens, Daniel Seghers, Snyders, and others) and retouched pictures by pupils, the degree of his intervention being reflected in the price. Generally his assistants did much of the work between the initial oil sketch and the master's finishing touches. Modern taste has tended to admire these sketches and his drawings (in which his personal touch is evident in every stroke of brush, chalk, or pen) more than the large-scale works, but Rubens himself would surely have found this attitude hard to comprehend, for the sheer scale and grandeur of the finished paintings gives them an extra, symphonic dimension.

Among Rubens' major works from the second decade of the century are the religious paintings The Last Judgment (c. 1616; Alte Pinakothek, Munich) and Christ on the Cross (1620; Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels) and the mythological paintings Battle of the Amazons (c. 1618; Alte Pinakothek) and Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus (c. 1617-18; Alte Pinakothek). His pictures of wild animals culminated in the Hippopotamus Hunt (c. 1615-16; Alte Pinakothek) and similar hunting scenes.

Diplomatic career

In the period between 1621 and 1630, Rubens was increasingly used as a diplomat by the Spanish Habsburg rulers. His contact with the leading political and intellectual figures of Europe, as well as his gracious manner, made him the ideal political agent. Furthermore, as a painter, he could often act as a covert diplomat or observer. His first important diplomatic functions were in connection with the attempt of Spain to renegotiate the Twelve Years' Truce (1609-21) between the Habsburg-controlled area of Flanders and the Dutch Republic to the north. Rubens became an adviser to Archduchess Isabella, the regent of Flanders and daughter of the Habsburg ruler of Spain, Philip II. On her behalf Rubens tried to intercede with the Dutch, but war soon broke out again in the Netherlands between the Protestant Dutch and the Catholic Flemish and continued for the rest of Rubens' life.

Early in 1622 Rubens was summoned to Paris by Marie de Médicis, the widow of Henry IV and mother of the reigning king of France, Louis XIII. This Florentine princess, whose wedding by proxy Rubens had attended in Florence in 1600, commissioned him to paint two series of paintings for two long galleries in her newly constructed Luxembourg Palace. One cycle of 21 pictures representing episodes from Marie's life now hangs in the Louvre Museum, while the other proposed series of pictures, dealing with the life of Henry IV, was never completed. After six weeks of discussion and arrangements, Rubens returned to Antwerp, where he worked for two years on this, his most artistically important secular commission. He returned to Paris in 1625 to install the Marie de Médicis pictures.

In 1628 Rubens traveled to Madrid, where he tried to lay the groundwork for peace negotiations between Spain and England. There he was made an envoy by King Philip IV and sent on a special peace mission to Charles I of England in 1629. It is to Rubens' personal diplomacy that the peace treaty of 1630 between England and Spain can largely be attributed. In reward for his services he was knighted and given an honorary degree by Cambridge University. Charles I also commissioned him to decorate the ceiling of the royal Banqueting House (1619-22) designed by the court architect Inigo Jones as a part of Whitehall Palace. Finished in 1634, the nine huge panels allegorize the reign of James I, the father of Charles I.

Late years in Flanders

On his return to Flanders in 1630, Rubens was rewarded by the archduchess with exemption from further diplomatic missions. The peace Rubens had worked for nearly 10 years to achieve, however, did not last, and for most of the next 20 years Europe continued to be embroiled in the Thirty Years' War.

Having been a widower for four years, Rubens in 1630 married the 16-year-old Hélèna Fourment, whose charms recur frequently in such late figure paintings as The Garden of Love (1634; Prado Museum, Madrid), The Three Graces (c. 1638-40; Prado), and The Judgment of Paris (1638-39; Prado), as well as in Hélèna Fourment with Fur Cloak (c. 1638-40; Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna) and other portraits. Rubens bought the château of Elewijt in 1635, and in his last years he spent much time there depicting the rural life and scenery outside of Antwerp in such paintings as The Kermesse (c. 1636-38; Louvre Museum, Paris). His long-established interest in landscape painting reached its grandest and most emotionally romantic expression in such late works as Landscape with a Rainbow (c. 1634; The Hermitage, St. Petersburg) and Chateau de Steen (c. 1635-37; National Gallery, London). Rubens' major commission during these last years, however, was to provide for King Philip IV of Spain (the brother of the infante Ferdinand, who had succeeded Archduchess Isabella as regent of Flanders) models for about 120 scenes from the writings of the Roman poet Ovid and other classical authors to decorate the Torre de la Parada, the royal hunting lodge near Madrid. Rubens died at Antwerp in 1640 when gout, which had for months troubled his painting arm, reached his heart.

Achievement

Rubens was one of the most methodically assimilative and most prodigiously productive of Western artists. His abundant energy fired him to study and emulate the masters both of antiquity and of the 16^th century in Rome, Venice, and Parma. His warmth of nature made him responsive to the artistic revolutions being worked by living artists, and robust powers of comprehension nourished his limitless resource in invention. He was able to infuse his own astounding vitality equally into religious and mythological paintings, portraits, and landscapes. He organized his complex compositions in vivid, dynamic designs in which limitations of form and contour are discounted in favour of a constant flow of movement. Rubens' voluptuous women may not be to the taste of modern viewers but are related to the full and opulent forms that were the ideal of womanhood during the Baroque period.

The larger the scale of the undertaking the more congenial it was to Rubens' spirit. The success of his public performance as master of the greatest studio organization in Europe since Raphael's in Rome has obscured for many the personal intensity of his vision as evinced in such works as his oil sketch for All Saints (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam) and in his deeply felt study for the head of St John in the Antwerp cathedral Descent from the Cross, as well as in portraits of his family and friends and in his treatment of the mood and grandeur of landscape. Rubens' most immediate influence was on Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Jacob Jordaens, and other painters in Flanders, but artists at almost every period have responded to the force of his genius. He is a central figure in the history of Western art.

Rubens' own deepest love as a painter, consummated by his second visit to Spain, was for the poetry, the control of glowing colour, and the sheer mastery in handling of oil paint that distinguish the art of Titian. In these qualities Rubens himself became supreme, whether with the brilliant play of fine brushes over the white reflecting surface of a small panel, or with masterful gestures often more than six feet long, sweeping a richly loaded brush across a huge canvas. Rubens's influence in 17th-century Flanders was overwhelming, and it was spread elsewhere in Europe by his journeys abroad and by pictures exported from his workshop, and also through the numerous engravings he commissioned of his work. In later centuries, his influence has also been immense, perhaps most noticeably in France, where Watteau, Delacroix, and Renoir were among his greatest admirers. Because of the unrivalled variety of his work, artists as different in temperament as these three could respond to it with equal enthusiasm.

Pinturas. Paintings
 

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