Peter Paul Rubens

Painter

Peter Paul Rubens was born in Siegen, Free State of Prussia, Germany on June 28th, 1577 and is the Painter. At the age of 62, Peter Paul Rubens biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.

  Report
Date of Birth
June 28, 1577
Nationality
Belgium, Netherlands
Place of Birth
Siegen, Free State of Prussia, Germany
Death Date
May 30, 1640 (age 62)
Zodiac Sign
Cancer
Profession
Diplomat, Painter
Peter Paul Rubens Height, Weight, Eye Color and Hair Color

At 62 years old, Peter Paul Rubens physical status not available right now. We will update Peter Paul Rubens's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Height
Not Available
Weight
Not Available
Hair Color
Not Available
Eye Color
Not Available
Build
Not Available
Measurements
Not Available
Peter Paul Rubens Religion, Education, and Hobbies
Religion
Not Available
Hobbies
Not Available
Education
Tobias Verhaecht, Adam van Noort, Otto van Veen
Peter Paul Rubens Spouse(s), Children, Affair, Parents, and Family
Spouse(s)
Isabella Brant, ​ ​(m. 1609; died 1626)​, Helena Fourment ​(m. 1630)​
Children
Not Available
Dating / Affair
Not Available
Parents
Not Available
Peter Paul Rubens Life

Sir Peter Paul Rubens (Dutch: [ryb(n)s): a Dutch neologist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant, the Southern Netherlands, was born on June 28th, 1577 – October 30th (1640). (modern-day Belgium); modern-day Belgium). He is regarded as the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque period. Rubens' highly cited compositions refer to erudite aspects of classical and Christian history. His distinctive and extremely popular Baroque style emphasized movement, color, and sensuality, which followed the Counter-Reformation's quick, striking artistic style. Rubens was a painter who made altarpieces, portraits, parks, 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, a classically educated humanist scholar and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV of Spain and Charles I of England, in addition to running a large workshop in Antwerp that produced paintings that were popular with nobility and art collectors around Europe. Rubens was a prolific painter. Michael Jaffé's catalogue includes 1,403 pieces, excluding many copies made in his workshop.

His commission paintings were mainly historical paintings, which included religious and mythological subjects, as well as hunt scenes. He portrayed portraits, especially of friends and self-portraits, as well as portraits of landscapes, and in later life, he painted several landscapes. Rubens fabricated tapestries and prints, as well as his own home. He oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the royal entry into Antwerp by Austria's Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635. He wrote an article with illustrations of the palaces in Genoa, which was first published in 1622 as Palazzo di Genova. The book was instrumental in spreading the Genoese palace style in Northern Europe. Rubens was an avid art collector and had one of Antwerp's most important art and literature collections. He was also an art dealer, and is known to have sold a substantial number of art works to George Villiers, the 1st Duke of Buckingham.

He was one of the few major artists to make regular use of wooden panels as a support medium, even for very large works, but canvas also served well, especially when the artwork had to be sent a long distance. He often painted on slate for altarpieces to eliminate reflection issues.

Life

Rubens was born in Siegen and Maria Pypelincks, Jan Rubens and Maria Pypelincks. After increased religious uprising and persecution of Protestants during the Habsburg Netherlands, his father, a Calvinist, and his mother left Antwerp for Cologne in 1568. Rubens was baptised in Cologne at St Peter's Church.

Jan Rubens, the second wife of William I of Orange, died in 1570, leaving her daughter Christine who was born in 1571. Peter Paul Rubens was born in 1577, following Jan Rubens' detention for the crime. The family returned to Cologne last year. Rubens and his mother Maria Pypelincks moved to Antwerp, where he was raised as a Catholic in 1589, two years after his father's death.

Religion featured prominently in a lot of his art, and Rubens later became one of the leading figures of the Catholic Counter-Reformation style of painting (he had said "My passion comes from the heavens, not from earthly musings."

Rubens received a Renaissance humanist education in Antwerp, Italy, and classical literature. He began his artistic apprenticeship with Tobias Verhaeght at the age of fourteen. He studied under two of the city's most influential painters of the time, Adam van Noort and Otto van Veen, who died in a few years. After Raphael, a large portion of his early apprenticeship involved copying older artists' works, such as woodcuts by Hans Holbein the Younger and Marcantonio Raimondi's engravings. Rubens completed his education in 1598, when he first joined the Guild of St. Luke as an independent master.

Rubens was transported to Italy in 1600 and later that year. He began first in Venice, where he saw paintings by Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto before settling in Mantua at Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga's courthouse. Veronese and Tintoretto's color and compositions had an immediate influence on Rubens' painting, and his later, mature style was heavily inspired by Titian. Rubens travelled to Rome in 1601 with the Duke's financial assistance. He studied classical Greek and Roman art in Rome and copied the Italian masters' works. The Hellenistic sculpture Laocoön and His Sons was particularly influential on him, as was Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci's art. Caravaggio's latest, largely naturalistic paintings inspired him.

Rubens later made a copy of Caravaggio's Entombment of Christ and advised his patron, the Duke of Mantua, to buy The Death of the Virgin (Louvre). After returning to Antwerp, he was instrumental in the purchase of The Madonna of the Rosary (Kunstrytorische Museum, Vienna) for the St. Paul's Church in Antwerp. Rubens completed his first altarpiece commission, St. Helena with the True Cross for the Roman church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, during his first stay in Rome.

Rubens traveled to Spain in 1603, delivering gifts from the Gonzagas to the court of Philip III. When he was there, he investigated the extensive collection of Raphael and Titian that had been acquired by Philip II. During his stay in Lerma, he created an equestrian portrait of the Duke of Lerma, which shows the influence of works by Titian's Charles V at Mühlberg (1548; Prado, Madrid). This was the first of many in his career that combined art and diplomacy.

He returned to Italy in 1604, where he stayed for the next four years, first in Mantua and then in Genoa and Rome. Rubens created numerous portraits in Genoa, including the Marchesa Spinola-Doria (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), as well as a portrait of Maria di Antonio Serra Pallavicini, which influenced later paintings by Anthony van Dyck, Joshua Reynolds, and Thomas Gainsborough.

He illustrated books that were originally published in 1622 as Palazzi di Genova. He was mostly in Rome from 1606 to 1608, with the help of Cardinal Jacopo Serra (the brother of Maria Pallavicini), his most important commission to date for the city's most popular new church, Santa Maria in Vallicella, also known as the Chiesa Nuova.

The topic was supposed to be St. Gregory the Great and Ancient Roman Catholic saints adoring an image 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, which allows the authentic 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.

Rubens' life in Italy influenced his work. He wrote many of his letters and correspondences in Italian, nick named him as "Pietro Paolo Rubens" and talked of returning to the peninsula, a wish that never came true.

Rubens departed from Italy for Antwerp after hearing of his mother's illness in 1608, 1608. However, she died before he returned home. With the signing of the Treaty of Antwerp in April 1609, which sparked the Twelve Years' Truce, Mr. His return coincided with a period of revived prosperity in the city. Albert VII, Archduke of Austria, and Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain were both appointed as court painter by Rubens in September 1609.

He was given permission to base his Antwerp instead of at their Brussels courthouse, and to also work for other clients. He remained close to the Archduchess Isabella until her death in 1633, and was praised not only as a painter but also as an ambassador and diplomat. Rubens also honed his connection to the area, marrying Isabella Brant, the daughter of a well-known Antwerp phil and humanist, on October 3rd.

In 1610 Rubens built a new house and studio that he planned. The Rubenshuis Museum, the Italian-influenced villa in Antwerp's central, now accommodates his exhibit, where he and his apprentices made the bulk of the paintings, as well as his personal art collection and library, which are among the largest in Antwerp. During this time, he created a studio for many students and assistants. Anthony van Dyck, the young Anthony van Dyck, who became the leading Flemish portraitist and worked closely with Rubens, was his most popular pupil. Frans Snyders, a wildlife painter who contributed the eagle to Prosheus Bound (c. 1611–12, finished by 1618), and his good friend, Jan Brueghel the Elder, collaborated frequently with the many specialists active in the city, including the animal painter Frans Snyders, who made the eagle.

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

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 the country's top painter shortly after his return. For example, the Raising of the Cross shows the artist's interpretation of Tintoretto's Crucifixion for the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice, Michelangelo's dynamic figures, as well as Rubens' own personal style. This work has been viewed as a prime example of Baroque religious art.

Rubens grew his reputation in Europe during this period of his career, particularly for his buddy Balthasar Moretus, the publisher of the large Plantin-Moretus publishing house. Rubens founded a printmaking business in 1618 by requesting an unusual triple privilege (a precursor to copyright) to shield his designs in France, the Southern Netherlands, and the United Provinces. Rubens hired Lucas Vorsterman to engrave a number of his important religious and mythological works, to which Rubens paid their personal and professional respects to influential individuals in Southern Netherlands, United Provinces, England, France, and Spain. Rubens left the printmaking to specialists, including Lucas Vorsterman, Paulus Pontius, and Willem Panneels, with the exception of a few etchings. He recruited a few engravers trained by Christoffel Jegher, whom he carefully trained in the more expressive style he desired. Rubens made the last major woodcuts before the 19th-century revival of the art.

Marie de' Medici, the Queen Mother of France, commissioned Rubens to create two huge allegorical cycles honoring her life and the life of her late husband Henry IV in Paris in 1621. The Marie de Medici cycle (now in the Louvre) was installed in 1625, but although it was never complete, it was never completed. 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.

The Spanish Habsburg entrusted Rubens with a variety of diplomatic missions after the conclusion of the Twelve Years' Truce in 1621. Rubens engaged in clandestine information gathering, which was then a significant task for diplomats in Paris. To get information on political events in France, he relyed on his friendship with Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc. Rubens' diplomatic career was particularly active between 1627 and 1630, and he moved between Spain and England in an attempt to restore stability between the Spanish Netherlands and the United Provinces. He has also traveled to the northern Netherlands as both an artist and a diplomat.

He was often told that courtiers should not use their hands in any art or profession, but that he was also recognized as a gentleman by many. Rubens was ordained by Philip IV of Spain to the nobility in 1624 and knighted by Charles I of England in 1630. A few months later, Philip IV confirmed Rubens' status as a knight. In 1629, Rubens was granted an honorary Master of Arts degree from Cambridge University.

Rubens lived in Madrid for eight months between 1628 and 1629. In addition to diplomatic talks, he produced several major works for Philip IV and private patrons. He also began a new investigation into Titian's paintings, including several works such as the Madrid Fall of Man (1628–29). During his stay in Italy, he befriended court painter Diego Velázquez and the two couples decided to fly together to Italy the following year. Rubens' trip to Antwerp and Velázquez was on without him.

His stay in Antwerp was brief, and he soon travelled to London, where he remained until April 1630. The Allegory of Peace and War (1629; National Gallery, London) is a notable work from this period. It reveals the artist's vivacious desire for peace, and it was given to Charles I as a gift.

Although Rubens' worldwide success with collectors and nobility grew throughout this decade, his studio and his gallery also started to create monumental paintings for local patrons in Antwerp. The Virgin Mary Assumption (1625–6) for the Cathedral of Antwerp is a popular example.

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

The 16-year-old Hélène Fourment married his first wife Isabella in 1630, four years after the death of his first wife Isabella. In several of Hélène's paintings from the 1630s, including The Feast of Venus (Kunsthistorische Museum, Vienna), The Three Graces and The Judgement of Paris, (both Prado, Madrid). The artist's teenage wife was recognizable by viewers in the figure of Venus in the second painting, which was made for the Spanish court. Hélène Fourment, a Fur Wrap artist who also knows as Het Pelsken, is actually partially modelled after classical sculptures of the Venus Pudica such as the Medici Venus.

Rubens bought an estate outside of Antwerp, the Steen, where he spent a considerable portion of his time. Landscapes such as his Château de Steen with Hunter (National Gallery, London) and Farmers Returning from the Fields (Pitti Gallery, Florence) evoke the more personal nature of many of his later paintings. In later works, including Flemish Kermis (c. 1630; Louvre, Paris), he also drew on Netherlandish traditions of Pieter Bruegel the Elder for inspiration.

On May 30th, 1640, Rubens died of heart disease as a result of his persistent gout. He was laid to rest in the St James' Church in Antwerp. In the church, the artist and his family were buried. Cornelis van Mildert (the son of Rubens' friend, sculptor Johannes van Mildert) installed the altarstone in 1642 and was completed in 1650. The cathedral is a marble altar portico with two columns framing the Virgin and child's altarpiece, which was painted by Rubens himself. The painting depicts the Counter Reformation's basic tenets through the figures of the Virgin and saints. A marble statue depicting the Virgin as the Mater Dolorosa, whose heart is pierced by a sword, was presumably sculpted by Lucas Faydherbe, a Rubens student. Helena Fourment and two of her children (one of whom was fathered by Rubens) were later laid to rest in the chapel. About 80 descendants of the Rubens family were interred in the chapel over the course of the centuries.

Rubens' epitaph, written in Latin by his friend Gaspar Gevartius, was chiselled on the chapel floor at the request of canon van Parijs. Rubens is compared from epitaph to Apelles, Greece's most popular painter.

Source