National Gallery of Art - Sir Peter Paul Rubens
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the prize material of any art gallery in that era. During the transaction, Rubens described this canvas as: “Daniel among many lions, taken from
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Sir Peter Paul Rubens
T
he most sought-after painter in northern Europe during the seventeenth century, Peter Paul Rubens was also a diplomat, linguist, and scholar. His dynamic, emotional style with its rich texture, vivid color, and lively movement has influenced Western art to the present day. Born the son of a lawyer and educated at a Jesuit school in Antwerp, Flanders, Rubens learned classical and modern languages. He spent the years 1600 to 1609 studying and working in Italy. Returning to Antwerp, he continued to travel as both courtier and painter. His repeated visits to Madrid, Paris, and London allowed him to negotiate treaties while accepting royal commissions for art. One of Rubens’ major innovations in procedure, which many later artists have followed, was his use of small oil studies as compositional sketches for his large pictures and tapestry designs. Rather than merely drawing, Rubens painted his modelli, or models, thereby establishing the color and lighting schemes and the distributions of shapes simultaneously.
Sir Peter Paul Rubens Flemish, 1577 – 1640
Marchesa Brigida Spinola Doria, 1606 Sir Peter Paul Rubens Flemish, 1577 – 1640 The Fall of Phaeton, c. 1604/1605, probably reworked c. 1608/1609
Helios, the Greek god who drove the chariot of the sun, had a son, Phaeton, by a human mother. With the rashness of youth, Phaeton tricked his father into letting him drive the chariot. The horses instantly bolted, scorching everything in their path with the sun’s heat. The butterfly-winged female figures are personifications of the seasons and hours. They react in terror as the earth below bursts into flame. Even the great astrological bands that arch through the heavens are disrupted. To save the universe from destruction, Zeus, king of the gods, threw a thunderbolt, represented here by a blinding shaft of light. As the chariot disintegrates Phaeton plunges to his death. Rubens painted The Fall of Phaeton in Rome. The powerful movement and complex poses were influenced by works of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo. The lighting reveals Rubens’ attention to Venetian artists as well. Rubens continued to work on the painting over a number of years. Very likely he found the subject—which warned of the need for personal restraint and responsibility— congenial to his own philosophical beliefs. Oil on canvas, 98.4 x 131.2 cm (38 ¾ x 51 ⅝ in.) Patrons’ Permanent Fund 1990.1.1
Sir Peter Paul Rubens Flemish, 1577 – 1640 Agrippina and Germanicus, c. 1614
Roman historians directed glowing praise to Agrippina and her husband Germanicus (died ad 19). Tacitus described her as “the glory of her country,” while Suetonius claimed he “possessed all the highest qualities of body and mind.” Germanicus, adopted son of the emperor Tiberius, was a brilliant general. Agrippina, granddaughter of Augustus, Rome’s first emperor, was renowned for devotion and bravery. For Rubens, the couple’s moral virtue was reflected in their physical beauty. Agrippina has a strong face, with glowing skin and golden hair. Notice how subtly Rubens distinguished her ivory complexion from the slightly ruddier face of her husband. The unusual double-bust format, like the paint’s luminous translucent quality, is explained by Rubens’ inspiration: ancient cameos. The artist was a great collector of antiquities, including engraved gems. He planned to illustrate a publication of these small-scale sculptures, but the project was never completed. Germanicus’ profile here — with aquiline nose, arched brows, and rounded chin — is similar to a design Rubens made possibly after one of his own cameos. Oil on panel, 66.6 x 57.1 cm (26 ¼ x 22 ½ in.) Andrew W. Mellon Fund 1963.8.1
SIR PETER PAUL RUBENS
Rubens and the Baroque Style
The dramatic artistic style of the seventeenth century is now called the “baroque,” a later term apparently derived from ornate jewelry set with irregular pearls. At its most exuberant, the baroque involves restless motion, startling color contrasts, and vivid clashes of light and shadow. Baroque art often appeals directly to the emotions, explaining why three of the life-size beasts in Rubens’ Daniel in the Lions’ Den —hanging in this room—stare hungrily out at the viewer. Rubens managed a very large studio in Antwerp, training many apprentices and employing independent colleagues to help execute specific projects. Among his mature collaborators whose baroque works are on view in the National Gallery’s Flemish rooms are Anthony van Dyck, Jacob Jordaens, Jan Brueghel, and Frans Snyders, whose opulent Still Life with Grapes and Game usually hangs in this gallery. Rubens’ style tremendously influenced baroque painters throughout Europe, even those like the German-born Johann Liss who had no documented contact with the master. Liss’ The Satyr and the Peasant nearby, for instance, is Rubenesque in its lively gestures and telling expressions. Painted during the 1620s in Italy, it illustrates a tale from Aesop’s Fables in which an immortal satyr helped a peasant find his way through a winter storm. The goat-legged creature was astonished when the man put his chilled hands to his mouth to warm them. In thanks for the satyr’s guidance, the peasant invited him home to eat. The satyr was further perplexed when the man blew on his spoon to cool the hot soup. Liss portrayed the tale’s moral when the satyr jumped up in disgust at human hypocrisy, proclaiming, “I will have nothing to do with someone who blows hot and cold with the same breath!”
On at least four occasions during his long stay in Italy (1600–1609), Rubens worked in Genoa, a prosperous seaport. He painted this proud Genoese aristocrat in 1606, the year following her marriage. It is one of a number of female portraits Rubens made in Genoa, a city renowned as a paradiso delle donne (a paradise of women). The Genoese republic, governed by a wealthy oligarchy, granted women unusual respect and constitutional freedoms. The marchesa’s image conveys both lively humanity and dignity and commands real physical presence. Her gaze, as well as the angle of the architecture, indicates the painting was meant to be seen from below. The painting was much larger and more imposing before the canvas was cut down in the nineteenth century. The marchesa’s stately pose is far from static; it is activated by light, by the diagonal flow of a red curtain, and by Rubens’ bravura brushwork. The marchesa’s silvery satin dress is built up of layers of translucent glazes and highlighted with thick, freely painted strokes. Rubens combined this bold, painterly style—which he learned from his study of Venetian artists like Veronese, Tintoretto, and Titian—with the tradition for detailed, carefully observed surfaces from his native Flanders. Compare, for example, the expressive painting technique in the dress and curtain with the precise handling of the architecture.
Oil on canvas, 152.2 x 98.7 cm (60 x 38 ⅞ in.) Samuel H. Kress Collection 1961.9.60
N ATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON
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