Peter Paul Rubens

Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish artist who is renowned for the paintings and drawings he created in a Baroque style in the early decades of the 17th century. His artworks ranged from portraits, self-portraits, landscapes and hunting scenes to biblical and mythological pictures. These influenced a vast array of artists who came after him, such as Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Jean-Antoine Watteau and John Constable.

Rubens was born in Westphalia in present-day Germany in 1577. He moved with his family to Antwerp at a young age and trained under a handful of artists there. Arguably his real education, however, came upon leaving for Italy in 1600, where he encountered the works of Mantegna, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian and other masters.

Rubens ended up spending eight years in Italy, most of it as court painter to Vincenzo I Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua. He didn’t only create artworks for Gonzaga, however — he also went on diplomatic missions for him. An urbane figure who spoke five languages, Rubens for much of his life twinned a career as an emissary with one as an artist.

In 1608, he returned to Antwerp for good. The city was then part of the Spanish Netherlands, and Rubens — a devout Catholic — frequently produced pictures in line with the Counter Reformation. Two of his best-known works, the triptychs The Elevation of the Cross and The Descent from the Cross, were painted for Antwerp’s Cathedral of Our Lady and can still be seen there.

His style was essentially a mix of Northern European naturalism with the colour and dramatics of Italian Renaissance art.

‘The painter of princes and the prince of painters’ is how one of Rubens’ peers described him. This reflected the fact that his works were coveted by many of Europe’s most important figures. These included Archduke Albert and Archduchess Isabella, the rulers of the Spanish Netherlands; Charles I, the King of England; and Philip IV, the King of Spain, for whom he painted Saturn devouring a Son in 1636–38 (a canvas which can today be found in the Museo del Prado in Madrid).

Late in life, Rubens turned increasingly to painting landscapes around a rural castle he acquired called Het Steen. He died in 1640, aged 62.