How Religion Shaped Rubens Into One Of History's Best Painters | Great Artists | Perspective

foreign [Music] genius and suffering have often gone hand in hand but for Peter Paul Rubens professional achievement combined with lifelong personal happiness scholar he was also a man of such charm that he worked with great success as a diplomat [Music] but more than anything he was an artist of the highest rank just paint her whose influence has spanned the centuries it is Reuben's huge body of work that makes him possibly the greatest of all the Dutch and Flemish Masters [Music] in 1566 in the Flemish city of Antwerp Protestant riots broke out against Spanish hereditary rule outraged King Philip of Spain moved to crush the Rebellion by 1579 there existed a clear distinction between Protestant Holland to the north and Catholic Flanders to the South one wealthy citizen of Flemish Antwerp who reflected the turmoil of the times was Jan Rubens originally a Catholic he had become a Protestant only to flee when King Philip's forces attacked in 1568. he moved to the German city of Cologne where he reconverted to Catholicism and worked as legal advisor to the princess of Orange three years later following an adulterous affair with the princess Jan Rubens was exiled to the town of Siegen Ten Years Later Reuben's senior died and his widow now returned to Antwerp with her three remaining dependent children Philip Peter Paul and a daughter blandina back in Antwerp there was no doubt about the youngest son's religious identity Peter Paul Rubens was raised as a Catholic and his Devotion to the Roman Church would remain with him throughout his life and purpose Catholic City therefore he was ever belonged to the right religion he knew all the rap people the church members of the church and rulers of the city and therefore that immediately brought him to contact with them and naturally when all the major commissions came up he was the Prime candidate for being given the job his religious beliefs had an enormous effect on both his life and his work he lived a moderate and respectable life in his paintings he's trying to put over the Catholic Orthodox view of religion and his paintings were meant to be seen as aids to prayer and also meditation and to reinforce belief as well clearly he is one of the great interpreters of the counter-reformation and yet if you think about him as a I mean if you're thinking about his personal belief one thinks that he is a really a man who thought more broadly than just within a denominational framework of Catholicism one might really say that Rubens would not have become a painter had he not been a Catholic and that's a pretty huge thing to say given the importance his importance to the history of Art [Music] by the end of the 1590s Reuben's professional Destiny was also clear at the age of 11 he attended for donk's school near antwerp's Gothic Cathedral where he began a lifelong love affair with classical literature but his real passion was already clear painting still in his early teens he was apprenticed to a local landscape artist he then spent four years with the portraitist Adam Van nort before moving on in 1596 to work in the studio of antwerp's best known painter Otto fanfine who had studied in Italy and had renamed himself Octavius Venus it was Van Veen who introduced Rubens to Engravings of great Italian Renaissance paintings and in two of the earliest surviving works by Rubens we can clearly identify this influence Adam and Eve in paradise and Judgment of Paris were both inspired by the work of the great Raphael by this time Rubens was established as a painter in his own right but he knew he had to experience the Italian Masters directly so in May 1600 at the age of 22 he left Antwerp and headed south two months later he arrived at his Italian destination Venice in the 16th century Venice had been the home of some of the greatest painters of the Renaissance artists of the caliber of Giorgione Titian and veronese had evolved a wonderfully vibrant approach to light and color with a freedom of brush work quite different from the great Florentine masters of the age [Music] the young Reubens especially appreciated the titians on display in Venice it was an admiration he would never lose he particularly was interested first of all the color this wonderful sense of color Edition has a much richer a more vibrant than other artists and secondly the way the practitioner actually painted this very free use of the paintbrush so that you can actually watch The Strokes as the artist builds up a particular area in the picture and also the sense of light that permeates throughout titian's paintings we know that he copied paintings after Titian and we know too that Rubens was particularly taken by titian's great assumption in the Ferrari Church in Venice it's a monumental display of color and action I think it was it was subject matter was interesting for Reuben's intition color of course was very interesting for him but I think he has a profoundly different style of painting and so this kind of modeling in tones which is so characteristic of Titian is not really a style that Reubens wholeheartedly takes up in the 1630s is much closer to Titian than he is earlier in his career not long after arriving in Italy Ruben's secure ization as court painter to the Duke of Mantua but as a Young Man his passion was to fully learn his art to do that he needed to travel to the greatest Center of Italian artistic achievement a city of Rome Rubens was thrilled when in 1601 he arrived in Rome for the first time spent a great deal of time drawing classical sculpture in particular in many of his later paintings the ancient source of his figures can clearly be seen he was also able to study more of the art of the high Renaissance with Michelangelo and Raphael just two of the artists that inspired him but he also appreciated more contemporary work including the paintings of Karachi and Caravaggio [Music] at the time these artists were reacting against the artificialities of mannerism but had characterized much of the painting of the late 16th century [Music] they sought a new artistic approach in which the greatest legacies of the high Renaissance were combined with a new naturalism in figure depiction it would become known as The Art of the Baroque Rome was a site of um moving forward and the two principal artists or the two principles sort of positions perhaps more than artists in Rome when Rubens visited Rome at the beginning of the 17th century were Caravaggio and the Karachi brothers and cousin to the Karachi School Karachi was seen as the person that had regenerated Italian art after the excesses and artificialities of mannerism an ibile Karachi put art back onto a real and naturalistic footing Caravaggio of course was one of the artists who gave new readings of biblical subjects he gave them dynamism he gave them interest as well and it's from Caravaggio that Rubens learns about lighting and also about how animating groups and making Spectators become involved in the subject rubensburg is typical of Barack in the way that it's very Dynamic we had this tremendous sense of energy it's very unified message or subject that he's putting over and this Reliance on naturalism in the actual way he paints figures he's a great Storyteller I mean he and this surely is also a feature of Baroque painting it's a painting that impresses the viewer the counter-reformation Catholic with the drama the truth the the story of of of the Saints and of course of the Life of Christ himself Reuben's first visit to Rome lasted some eight months in that time he not only soaked up the exciting art of the city but began to make his own contribution to it but in early 1603 the Duke of Mantua presented Reubens with a very different kind of task to travel to Spain to present gifts to King Philip III by selecting his court painter to make the presentation the Duke was acknowledging Ruben's already evident charm the charm of the Diplomat artists have been diplomats for a very long time it's Rubens isn't the first one to be a diplomat I think what's different about Rubens is the level of diplomatic activity that he was engaged in he was really functioning at a at a high level at a sort of I suppose we might say ambassadorial level Reubens was a very self-assured man he really knew well he knew his own worth and he was extremely widely educated he was very rather worldly Man compared with a lot of artists he had great charm and I'm sure he conveyed a sense of reliability that any ruler wanting someone to act as their Diplomat are impressive it's already I think even in his earliest days was on aura about him that would impress not only his contemporary artists but also those in power his native language was Flemish but he could also speak Spanish French Latin which was spoken among Scholars at that time and his favorite language of all was Italian now Italian was the Diplomatic language so it's obviously very useful to have and he always signed himself an Italian he signed himself Pietro Paolo Rubens sadly for Rubens his first diplomatic missions suffered difficulties from the start amongst the gifts for the Spanish King were a number of paintings copies of great works by Titian and Raphael but during the long journey to Spain which included a sea Passage the canvases were badly damaged by rain reluctantly Rubens retouched them but his results were nonetheless well received but this entirely original portrait made a better impression still this is the Duke of Lama the strongest figure in the Spanish Court nobly depicted on his white stallion it was a canvas which impressed its subject and Ruben's Spanish Expedition widened his already extensive network of contacts [Music] back in Rome he created this Altarpiece for the new church of the oratorian priests a work which impressed the artist himself [Music] history hit is a streaming platform that is just for history fans with fantastic documentaries covering fascinating figures and moments in history from all over the world we aim to bring you only the most dramatic and fascinating stories of the past through our award-winning documentaries find out about the rise of leaders such as Cleopatra and Napoleon in our latest offering of exclusive documentaries sign up now for a free trial and prospective fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code perspective at checkout [Music] this second Roman stay was a happy time for Rubens living with his brother Philip and enjoying the artistic and intellectual life of the city philosophy was one of the many subjects that interested him and it is clear that the classical school of stoic philosophy held a particular appeal for him his philosophical beliefs are about modesty about virtue and about constancy the um the virtue of constancy they're linked with a an important philosophical movement in both in Italy throughout Europe really in the later 16th century and earlier 17th century which is called neostoicism now neostoicism was the reconciling of Christianity with the moral virtues of antiquity and the most learned neo-stoic philosopher was a man called Justice lipsius and we know that Reuben's brother was a pupil of his so Rubens is is very interested in leading a moral life based not only on Christianity but also on the teachings of people like tacitus the two aspects of neostatic belief that he was particularly influenced by were the controlling of one's emotions and the acceptance of fate these were two aspects of life you just had to face up to and accept [Music] Rubens was Keen to absorb the ideas of classical times but he was also Keen to collect the physical relics of the ancients by the time he left Rome in July 1607 he had already established a collection of Roman sculptures coins and other Antiquities that month traveled to the wealthy city of Genoa with his employer a journey that produced more useful contacts he painted many wealthy genuese citizens during his visit including this canvas depicting Giovanni Carlo Doria Genoa was a world where image and Prestige mattered as with the portrait of laoma it invests the mounted figure with a sense of grandeur but retains the sense of life and energy of an important citizen by 1608 Rubens was again in Rome completing the new church Altarpiece but on the 27th of October that year he received a grave communication from his home City his mother was seriously ill he left Italy at once but it was too late [Music] Reubens now had to decide whether to stay in Flanders or return South his mind was made up by a generous offer from the Catholic Regents of the Netherlands Archduke Albert and infanta Isabella on a salary of 500 florins a year he became their court painter Peter Paul Rubens was back in Antwerp it was a good time to return the city had suffered badly from the blockage of its Port access by the Protestant United provinces of Holland to the north but a 12-year truce was now in force the port was reopened and the local economy began to recover there were also strong personal reasons for Rubens to return in 1609 he married 19 year old Isabella Brandt from the start it was a happy marriage and when Reuben sought to depict himself with his new bride sitting beneath the honeysuckle Bower the result was this famous double portrait one of the most enduring visual celebrations of marital happiness ever created there were very few portraits self-portraits with spouses in history of art one or two in the north but this so this was a new type of portrait it's also on a very large scale it's about five foot high and it's it's wonderfully real it's really it's the way the contacts you have with the sitters you feel this is a modern marriage might have taken place yesterday touching ways she sits at his feet with our hands joined uh it's it's so direct one is transfixed by this image of a very happy couple the honeysuckle Bower portrait I think is all about trust and Fidelity he arranges it by a lot of interlocking shapes so there's this sense that the the two depend on one another the honeysuckle was an emblem of love and by clasping hands they suggest Fidelity as well what's also interesting about the portrait is that you would never think this is an artist and his wife so Reuben shows himself holding a very richly jeweled sword healed he's showing himself off as if anything a courtier and Rubens like to have this image of a gentleman artist about him in 1610 he bought a house on a patch of land in an affluent area of the city and began to extend his home there with a substantial area devoted to space for his ever-growing collection of antiques supervision of the construction was almost a work of art in itself but Rubens did not neglect his formal painting duties these portraits of Archduke Albert and the infanta Isabella represent his first commissions for his new employers once again he succeeded in capturing the Dignity of nobility but without neglecting individual personality in these striking images with their vivid red sunset background for Flemish painters or religious images the second decade of the 1600s was an often profitable time Major Works commissioned for many of antwerp's churches with Rubens the recipient of many of these commissions over the course of the decade he produced a large number of altarpieces to establish himself as the greatest religious painter of his age in his raising of the cross completed in 1611 we can immediately identify Jesus Humanity in what is a profoundly spiritual work but it is the overall layout of the Altarpiece that is perhaps more interesting the action and drama fills the canvas from bottom right to top left and the figures raising Christ are seemingly combined in a unified Mass individual components subordinate to the whole this trademark Baroque effect can also be seen in the descent from the cross completed in 1614. here the scene is almost Mirror Image as the dead Jesus is taken down this panel presents a sense of movement but it is a mournful movement the significant event the crucifixion has already taken place both these remarkable paintings also reveal Reuben's passion for the sculptured images of the antique Reuben's was extremely interested in classical Antiquity and of course one of the principal reasons he wanted to go to Italy and one of the principal reason why he wanted to spend as much time as possible in Rome so he moved very soon from Mantra down to Rome was to study the great collections of antiquity in Rome in the early 17th century one of the things he said that when you are influenced by an antique sculpture the resulting work mustn't smell of stone and this is what's so good about rumors is painting because you can always or nearly always identify the particular sculptures used but they are transformed into his own language and there were several very well-known antique sculptures he used particularly the leoque which was done for any uh subject with suffering in it the foundation Hercules for strength son Christopher on the outer side of one of the the great altar pieces um The Descent from the cross has a figure of Saint Christopher which is based on Foundation Hercules Rubens painted enduring religious images throughout the 1610s but these were not the only commission the Rubens received at the time he also painted many mythological scenes such as Ganymede and the eagle here it is perhaps the eagle rather than Ganymede who holds our attention [Music] Rubens was certainly a master of painting animals and he was often in demand to paint the hunting scenes which were popular at the time the lion hunt is a classic example of the genre again we are presented with a unified swirling mass of life with the ferocity of the great cats memorably executed there's nobody really to rival Rubens in the 17th century even in Italy there are people that can't compete with this vibrant energy and life that he managed to put manages to put into paintings I think the greatest example of the secular Baroque if you like the non-religious Barack is Reuben's lion hunt so we've got this terrific almost explosion of energy taking place in the painting right in the center of the painting The Lion is sinking its teeth into a horse we've also got these great diagonals that again add to the movement and instability in the painting and we're also not sure who's going to win this battle even if the lions are going to be killed they're giving a pretty good account of themselves Reuben's huge output would have been beyond the abilities of any man to achieve completely single-handed instead he was the head of a large studio a classically influenced building across the courtyard from his home it was certainly a thriving establishment as many as 100 artists may have worked there but not in the typical master and pupil sense clearly Rubens could not have taught so many instead the Reuben Studio was more like a Reuben's Factory some artists were employed to carry out the most mundane tasks such as grinding the paint others such as the young Anthony Van Dyke were given more responsibility with Rubens himself finishing off the final layers of the work more established artists were employed as named collaborators [Music] in this 1612 canvas depicting Prometheus the eagle is the work of his associate France schneiders [Music] the Antwerp Studio was a well-organized system with the artist very much in charge in addition to his other talents Rubens now revealed his skill as an administrator I like to think of Rubens as um either like a film director so that he's the orchestrator of lots and lots of other people working or the kind of director of a factory so to think about him as Rubens limited and it's um so imagine that you've got a brand name called Rubens and you've got to stamp that brand name on works that look like Rubens so that it's a particular style or mode of representation or mode of mode of painting a style of painting that is recognizably Rubens but not necessarily all by rubens's hand Rubens had far more work than he can ever cope with so he has to have almost a production line working it's correct to speak about Rubens and Company I think so he gathers around him not so much pupils he wasn't that interested in teaching but people who could assist in the production process what he did essentially is make sketches sketches rather like those behind me here which he would hand over to a member of the studio to work up into the LA to large canvases or large panels and then he would finish them off himself I mean in a way it wasn't a very complicated system paintings that he every every brass check was by himself well valued much more highly and as a celebrated letter to Sir Dudley Carlton offering various pictures and each one is described whether it's by himself entirely or with assistant or pupils but she's retouched and the prices are attached so you can see very clearly how Rubens valued his own contribution by 1620 Reuben's Fame spread far beyond Antwerp the technique of Engraving took his Works to the widest possible audience but his Fame never seems to have affected him his lifestyle is recorded as being one of sober routine according to one contemporary he rose at four in the morning celebrated Mass every day and avoided The Perils of drink while maintaining the widest possible range of interests he's not one of these artists that sat around waiting for inspiration to come he was always working record of a visit to his Studio says that they came across Rubens and he was working he was dictating a letter and he was having uh some some of the books of tacitus read to him at the same time he was a great reader a enormously knowledgeable having his knowledge of categical literature and a very wide subjects uh it was very remarkable and he liked to sit with friends and look at coins uh in the evening it was a super uh Royal regulated life in the early 1620s Rubens completed on time no less than 39 ceiling paintings for antwerp's new Jesuit Church sadly they were destroyed by fire in 1718 but many of the preliminary Works survive this panel depicting The Last Supper shows the Steep angle required for an effective ceiling painting surviving Preparatory panels or modeli such as this give us an insight into how Rubens went about creating his finest works Reuben never followed any one particular procedure but I think a typical one could say a typical way he went about it would be first of all to make a sketch of the composition in pen and ink which you didn't do an oil sketch a Modelo we call it once it established the general lines of a composition he could pass them on to his Studio they understood what he wanted they would do a lot of the work he would then have the final say and retouch anything that required retouching shortly after Rubens had successfully completed the ceiling paintings for the Jesuit Church the European political situation began to change 1621 saw the death of the king of Spain Philip III the end of the 12 years truce and in July the death of Reuben's Patron Archduke Albert Albert's Widow Isabella now appointed Rubens as her special Envoy hoping that his connections would prove useful in the intrigue-filled political negotiations of the time for the next nine years or so much of Reuben's time was taken up with diplomacy he got more involved in a much bigger diplomacy was sent to London where he was resided for nine months where he got involved in treaties between England and France and Spain this is the first age in those those 17th century diplomatic negotiations you had to agree to an exchange of ambassadors and what Rubens does in that visit is set up an exchange of ambassadors he didn't come as the representative of Spain he came as the representative of the Spanish Netherlands but of course he had all his orders issued to him directly from Madrid we know that he got on very well with Charles Charles was the greatest art collector of the day and so Charles thought it an honor to himself to meet such a great artist Ruben's diplomatic efforts would ultimately prove successful but we know he grew frustrated at the sheer amount of time that they consumed before completing his work for the Jesuit Church in Antwerp he had expressed a desire to take on even more ambitious commissions in January 1622 he was summoned to Paris by Maria de Medici Widow of Henry IV and mother of the young king Louis XII she commissioned a series of 24 paintings depicting events from her own life to be installed in the Luxembourg Palace one of her courtiers told her that it would take two Italian artists 10 years to carry out the task Rubens he said would do it in four in fact he completed the Commission in three a remarkable achievement since Madame de medici's desires were as much political as artistic the first cycle which was one that was actually completed was devoted to I think it was described as the Glorious and glorious Life in Her uretic Deeds of the queen well I'm afraid there was nothing glorious or heroic about her life and so it was a very skillful adaptation of certain incidents in her life which were dressed up in allegory to give them a much greater impact and this is what we see today but when we look behind the actual event it records you can see that it's a Pity mundane occasion or sometimes something that was not perhaps as glorious as she might have hoped for in this the fourth canvas in the cycle Rubens depicts King Henry IV first encountering the face of his future Queen who is undeniably the central figure the portrait is held by Hyman God of marriage and Cupid god of love and Henry is obviously love struck but the whole story is entirely fictitious the marriage had nothing to do with love and everything to do with politics and the Medici cycle made some political figures suspicious politics did not really interest Rubens despite being surrounded by it he once said that he was entirely dispassionate about everything except his own life and work remarkably Rubens was able to turn his attentions to other works even as he worked at the Medici cycle this delightful double portrait of his two sons Albert and Nicholas is an undeniably affectionate depiction a study in Boyhood especially emphasized by the illumination of the older son Albert for an artist inspired by Titian Reuben's Mastery of light is unsurprising and can also be seen in this portrait of Susanna Foreman a depiction of a friend's wife from the early 1620s [Music] one of the best loved of all Reuben's portraits it captures not only the sitters feminine modesty but the sheer freshness of her skin tone almost Rococo in its coloring he was a great colorist uh he changed in the course of his life but first strong local colors contrasted one with another gradually modified this it was much greater contrast between one color and another he tended to choose two or three basic colors which were the pattern for a particular picture and therefore you get maybe a red of of the costume which will then be picked up in other parts of the composition the same with blue and same with yellow and so on what you often find in Rubens as well is they get more than one source of light so it's not just one light source you might get multiple light sources and that's done to emphasize objects and give them all prominence in June 1626 his wife Isabella died the plague arrived in Antwerp in August 1625 and this may have been the cause of her death the loss of his wife filled Rubens with a desire to travel to get away from Antwerp until 1630 his political work achieved the subjective for him by March of that year the efforts of Rubens The Diplomat had succeeded in brokering a peace between England and Spain resulting in a Knighthood for the painter from the English King Charles an unparalleled honor for a painter Peter Paul Rubens was now known in the highest circles across Europe he was also now an extremely wealthy man having sold the majority of his antique collection to the English nobleman the Duke of Buckingham here drawn by Rubens himself when he returned to England in 1630 he was in modern terms the highest of high achievers his life was a catalog of success all achieved through his own effort and genius he had enormous success and he of course was was his work was what was was sought after throughout Europe when he painted for the king of Spain he begated for the king of England debated for the Queen Mother of of France as well as innumerable aristocratic clients I mean throughout throughout Europe so he really is an absolutely leading figure in northern Europe by the early 1630s his returns to Antwerp after quite a long period abroad in England in Spain and also having been in France and he buys a a country residence so like you know generation after generation of successful businessmen basically he puts his money into land and goes and lives the life of a Country Gentleman he was courted by Kings in a way that almost no other painter was was treated he was very wealthy he had a very happy family life for the second wife it was a really life a tremendous success and fulfillment and work Reuben's understandably sought to put his political life behind him and return full time to his art only the fact that he was a widower could now blight his happiness but by the end of 1630 that was no longer the case in December he married Helena Foreman sister of Susanna the young woman he had painted some years before Rubens was now 53 years of age his new bride was 16. in 10 years of marriage five children resulted the last conceived just one month before the artist's death but in this intriguing panel from 1631 the happy couple can be seen with the artist's son Nicholas from his first marriage perhaps Rubens deliberately decided to emphasize the figure of his beautiful young bride while he himself seems to peep out apologetically from behind her it is hardly surprising that Helena would be the subject of many of Ruben's later portraits the early 1630s saw Rubens engaged in more ambitious projects notably the ceiling decoration for the banqueting house in London's White Hall commissioned during Reuben's stay in England and finally delivered in 1635 these nine canvases use allegorical devices from the Bible and mythology to celebrate a recent political event the accession of King James of Scotland to the throne of England and thus the uniting of two countries under his apparently enlightened rule the coronation of James successor and Son Charles the first is also depicted and the British king was delighted with Reuben's achievement 1635 also saw Reubens purchased the castle of steam in the Flemish Countryside and for the remainder of his life he spent an increasing amount of his time there surrounded by a family who now provided much of the inspiration for his work he was now increasingly afflicted by gout and increasingly he chose to avoid the city and work in the country where he now lived the result was a remarkable series of landscapes these were not that Ruben's works in the genre but now he had the time to explore fully the light and color of Flemish outdoor life the sense of unification to his figure compositions was now invested in a Timeless series of Landscapes by an artist already almost 60. in the 19th century the English landscapist John Constable stated his view that these images represent Reuben's greatest achievement in my view these pictures were painted for as a decorative scheme for one of the principal rooms in the Chateau to stay and in a way Rubens could sit in this room in his in his house and look as it were into the pictures into the into the landscape that was around him one of the most remarkable things is that the landscape particularly from the northern tradition was divided into three parts you had the foreground which was largely Brown the middle ground which was largely green and then the background was blue you could see each division quite clearly in previous Landscapes Rubens is a tremendous sweep we start in the foreground and end up in the Horizon before you know what's happened to you and he broke down his barriers so that at the same time he had this ability to direct your eyes through every part of the landscape it's interesting that Reuben shows it with undulating landscape the landscape goes up and down it's quite hilly that's not true the area around the Chateau of stain is quite flat there are various elements within it we see a hunter and his dog pursuing game we also see a farmer and his wife going off to Market and the shadow of stain itself in the top left and the sky is cut by a pair of magpies everything in this painting adds up towards a kind of idyllic Rural Life if you like it's a hymn to the Pastoral sadly by 1640 the creator of these Timeless scenes was increasingly stricken by attacks of gout the end of Reuben's remarkable life was drawing near [Music] it was possibly as late as 1640 but he chose to paint one of the very few self-portraits of his career many have seen this canvas as Reuben's final statement to the world translated into words it might say all my life I have fulfilled the potential given to me by God I'm a man of high status because I have earned that status my Earthly days are now approaching their end and I leave my life's work to posterity on May the 30th 1640 Peter Paul Rubens died there have been few if any artists who have achieved so much in both working and personal lives in his lifetime he was recognized as one of the greatest Geniuses to ever pick up a brush the subsequent centuries have done nothing to alter that recognition perhaps only Rembrandt can rival Rubens for the title greatest of the Dutch Masters Rubens is the greatest of all 17th century artists I think nobody was painting with the same Vigor vitality and understanding of the drama of whom human life he brought a new style Dynamic style of painting two Flanders a painting of we realized very high quality indeed he he painted in all kinds of different fields knew one one particular subject Rubens is the most important artist working in the northern Europe in the first half of the 17th century admired throughout Europe amayad in Madrid admired in Rome admired in Paris admired in London I mean he has a huge International reputation and he's famous really for religious painting I mean essentially he's he's interesting as a portraitist he's interesting as a these very private works of landscape but essentially is a great religious painter is what he's particularly and a great decorative painter painter of great decorative schemes the married and Medici Series this great series of allegorical paintings of the life of Mary de Medici the decorations with the banqueting hall ceiling in in London and so on so great decorative undertakings and great altarpieces I mean this is this is the great achievement of Rubens Reuben's exercises an enormous influence I think mostly in France painters like Votto painters like Boucher but I think the greatest influence is on dulaqua delaqua the great romantic artist also wrote and thought a lot about Rubens as well and he always called Reubens the king of painters foreign

Channel: Perspective

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Keywords: Baroque painter, European history, European painters, European politics, Perspective, art and culture, art diplomacy, art documentary, art exhibition, art influence, art market, art movements, creative process, creativity in art, historical documentaries, iconic painters, painting techniques, religious art, religious art interpretations, religious representation, traditional art

Id: WO4OSukQBb0

Length: 47min 52sec (2872 seconds)

Published: Sat May 27 2023