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languages, and was probably the most learned artist of all time. His house in Antwerp was a factory
from which massive works emerged in a never-ending stream. Although most paintings were
designed by Rubens in rapidly painted colour sketches on wood, all the large ones were painted by
pupils and then retouched by the master.
Rubens was the man of extraordinary character and intelligence. One visitor recounted how
Rubens could listen to a reading of Roman history in Latin, carry on a learned conversation, paint a
picture, and dictate a letter all at the same time.
Rubens first emerged on the international scene during his visit to Italy in 1600 where he
remained for eight years. Artistically Rubens was an adopted Italian, with little interest in the Early
Netherlandish masters. With indefatigable energy he set out to conquer the fortress of Italian art. He
made hundreds of drawings and scores of copies after Roman sculpture as well as paintings.
An early work in Antwerp Cathedral, the Raising of the Cross, a panel more than fifteen feet
high, painted in 1609-10, shows the superhuman energy with which Rubens attacked his mighty
concepts. This central panel of a triptych is a complete picture in itself. There is no hint of
Caravaggio's psychological interests. The executioners, whose muscularity recalls Michelangelo's
figures, raise the Cross, forming a colossal pyramid of struggling figures. In this painting the typical
High Renaissance interfigural composition is transformed into a Baroque climax.
The power of Rubens can be seen at its greatness in the Fall of the Damned, painted about
1614-18, a waterspout of hurling figures raining down from Heaven, from which the rebels against
divine love are forever excluded.
As his style matured, Rubens's characteristic spiral-into-the-picture lost the dark shadows of
his early works and took on a Titianique richness of colour.
In 1621-25 Rubens carried out asplendid commission from Maria de'Medici, dowager Queen
of France, widow of Henry IV, and regent during the minority of her son Louis XIII. Twenty one
large canvases represent an allegorized version of the Queen career, showing her protected at every
point by the divinities of Olympus. The series were originally installed in a ceremonial gallery in
the Luxembourg Palace. All the canvases show the magnificence of Rubens's compositional
inventiveness and the depth of his Classical learning; but Henry IV Receiving the Portrait of Maria
de ' Medici is one of the best. The ageing King, whose helmet and shield are taken by Cupids, is
advised by Minerva to accept as his second bride the Florentine princess, whose portrait is
presented by Mercury, as Juno and Jupiter smile upon the proposed union. The happy promise of
divine intervention; the youthful figure; the grandeur of the armoured king, and the distant
landscape make this painting one of the happiest of Rubens's allegorical works. The Queen never
paid for the series. But when she was driven out of France by her former protege Cardinal
Richelieuw, she took refuge in Flanders. Rubens helped to support her during her twelve years of
exile - a remarkable tribute not only to the generosity of a great man but also to the position of a
Baroque artist who could finance a luckless monarch.
In 1630, then 53 years old Rubens married Helene Fourment, a girl of 16. The artist's
happiness received its perfect embodiment in the Garden of Love painted about 1638, a fantasy in
which seven of the Fourment sisters are happily disposed throughout the foreground before the
fantastic fountain-house in Rubens's own garden in Antwerp. Cupids fly above the scene with bows,
arrows , a rose garland, and torches, and on the right sits a statue of Venus astride a dolphin. All the
movements of Rubens's colour, all the energy of his composition are summed up in the radiance of
the picture, the happiest Baroque testament to the redeeming power of love.
Make sure you know how to pronounce the/allowing words:
Antwerp [
]; Luxembourg [
]; Cologne [
]; Protestant
[
]; emigre [
]; Medici [
]; dowager [
]; protege
[
]; Richelieuw [
; Juno [
]; Minerva [
]; Flanders
[
]; Louis[
]; regent [
]
NOTES
Raising of the Cross - "Воздвижение креста"
Fall of the Damned - "Падение проклятых"