Peter Paul Rubens

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Pieter Pauwel (Peter Paul) Rubens (June 28, 1577 – May 30, 1640) was a Flemish artist, considered by many to be one of the greatest painters in European art history, a master of the Baroque style and the most important Flemish painter of the 17th century.

Rubens was born in Siegen, Westphalia to a successful Protestant lawyer who had fled Antwerp to escape religious persecution. In 1589, two years after his father's death, Rubens and his mother returned to Antwerp, where he had himself baptized a Catholic. Religion figured prominently in much of his later work. In Antwerp, his mother apprenticed Rubens to leading painters of the time.

In 1600 he went to Venice, Italy, where he worked as a court painter to the duke of Mantua, Vincenzo I of Gonzaga. He studied ancient Roman art and learned by copying the works of the Italian masters. His mature style was profoundly influenced by Titian.

Upon the death of his mother in 1608, Rubens returned to Antwerp. A year later he married Isabella Brant, daughter of Jan Brant, a leading Antwerp humanist. His altarpieces The Raising of the Cross (1610) and The Descent of the Cross (1611–1614) for the Cathedral of Our Lady established Rubens as Flanders' leading religious painter.

He received numerous commissions from the French court, including a series of allegorical paintings on the life of Marie de' Medici (now in the Louvre). He and his workshop executed many monumental religious paintings, such as the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in the Cathedral of Antwerp. The young Anthony van Dyck was one of the assistants in Rubens' studio.

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In the period between 1621 and 1630, the Spanish Habsburg rulers entrusted Rubens with a number of diplomatic missions. Charles I of England knighted him for his diplomatic efforts to bring about a peace treaty between England and Spain. He was also commissioned to paint the ceiling of the Banqueting House at the Palace of Whitehall.

Image:Peter Paul Rubens 090.jpg In 1630, four years after the death of his first wife, the 53-year-old painter married 16-year-old Hélène Fourment. Rubens had three children with Isabella and five with Hélène; his youngest child was born eight months after his death. Hélène's charms recur in later works such as The Garden of Love, The Three Graces and The Judgment of Paris, painted for the Spanish court and now in the Prado.

Rubens died of gout at age 63 and was interred in Saint Jacob's church, Antwerp.

At a Sotheby's auction on July 10, 2002, Rubens' painting Massacre of the Innocents sold for £49.5million ($76.2 million) to Lord Thomson. A renowned collection of Peter Paul Rubens paintings and cartoons is displayed in the collection of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida.

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Painting for peace

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His picture in the National Gallery, London, The Allegory of Peace and War (1629), reflects, and even illustrates, his strong concern for peace. It was given to Charles I and helped to create a peace treaty between London and Madrid. He visited the Netherlands, which was "enemy territory," partly to meet Dutch artists and partly to seek political reconciliation. There he encountered the attitude that courtiers should not use their hands in any art or trade. But because he was such a fine artist, Philip IV and Charles I both enjoyed his company as well as his art.

Peter Paul Rubens, self portrait	Self-Portrait without a Hat. c. 1639. Oil on canvas. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy	Saint Theresa of Avila's Vision of the Dove	Allegory on Charles V as ruler of the World
The Adoration of the Magi, painted 1624.