Rubens: Too Much for Modern Audiences? (Art History) | Perspective

[Music] Ruben's is the nastiest most vulgar painter that ever lived his pictures always put me in mind of chamber pots Thomas he kills to my eye Reubens his coloring is contemptible his shadows of filthy Brown somewhat the color of experiment William Blake he's gifted but he's used his gifts to make nasty things Picasso [Music] [Applause] [Music] the modern world really has it in for Reubens it's as if everything he did jars with our sensibilities and goes against our grain his religious pictures are completely over the top aren't they too violent too noisy to Catholic his mythologies are even worse all those fleshy pink God's doing silly things in ridiculous mythological pantomimes and as for his women oh my god Reubens his women they're just too fat aren't they women in art shouldn't carry this much cellulite so that's what people think but it's not what I think I think Rubens was one of the most exciting painters the world has seen just look at all that invention that energy that drama so yes I'm a Rubens man and in this film I'm going to try and make all of you Rubens people [Music] I've never so discussed that in my life as with Rubens and his eternal wives Lord Byron eternal wives when Lord Byron complains about Rubens's eternal wives he's complaining about all those notoriously large women in Rubens's art the modern world simply doesn't tolerate women like this does it [Music] but why not seriously why not what's wrong with a few bulges and a bit of cellulite don't tell me nobody out there has got any even I've got a bit of sin light besides if you look back at the art of the past the best evidence there is of the human worldview if you go right back to the beginning you'll see that Rubens is women are the norm not the exception this is the villain door Venus the oldest known masterpiece of sculpture her task is to ensure human fertility she's a bringer of life a good luck charm and look how fleshy Andrew benzion she is [Music] in any case not all Rubens's women were like that they weren't all fleshy housewives some of them were women of remarkable power and confidence I mean see all this everything in this room this entire Rube Enzian outpouring all of it is about one woman that woman over there the art-loving Queen of France Mary de Medici there she is being born as a Medici she was born in Florence and that's why there are all these cherubs down here popping out of the river arno to welcome her his she is at school being educated by the gods Apollo is teaching her music hermes teaches languages over here that's the French King Henry the fourth seeing her picture and like it Henry liked it so much he married her but don't not going to take you through all of it there's still most of the room to go 21 pictures in all taking up a huge slab of the Luke but we are here for Reubens not for Mary de Medici and there's a big rue benzion truth I want to tackle in here about the impact of his work you know when you first come in here and you see all this you're tempted to walk a bit faster aren't you to give most of this amiss don't worry we all feel like that I mean all this is terrifying right with Rubens there's so much to look at is in there too much his art sometimes forms an impenetrable blob of bodies that frighten you away here's a good example Rubens is fall of the Damned it's just scary isn't it have you ever seen so many bodies in one picture then when you step closer and start giving it a good look see what happens the fleshy blobs start to disentangle themselves and make sense the details emerge and they're fascinating look at that oh that and that the point is Rubens always gave more than was asked of him he was so inventive and daring had so much fun painting his pictures from a distance that's not always obvious from a distance Rubens can seem frightening but if you get closer to him close enough to see what he's actually up to Rubens is absolutely delightful and guess what you have an ally in this exciting exploration the camera the camera loves Rubens it gets you close enough to see his details high enough to inspect his corners since this painting left Rubens his studio no one's been able to see it as well as this so yes stick with me stick with the camera and let's plunge together it's all that Rubens out [Music] before we go an inch further into this film we need to have a geography this is famous map called the Leo bélgica s' and it was brought house in 1609 by a cartographer called Klaus Janson viescha and it shows Western Europe as it was in Rubens is timer the lion shows the outline of what used to be called the Spanish Netherlands today it's three different countries Belgium around here Holland up here and over here Luxembourg it was called the Spanish Netherlands because all these lands belong to them to the Spanish Kings who'd inherited them from the begun dee ins and it was divided up into provinces seventeen of them these seventeen provinces were split on religious lines up here were the Protestants the Calvinists down here in the Flemish bit were the Catholics so this part in this part were at loggerheads then in 1568 the simmering tension between the Calvinists north and the Catholics south erupted into a terrible war one of the most brutal and longest Wars in European history called the eighty years war now Rubens was born in 1577 just after the fighting started he died in 1640 a few years before it finished so for his entire life all 63 years of it the North was fighting the South Catholics were fighting the Protestants it's the only reality he ever knew all that was happening around him all the time and it's against that bad cloth that his life and his art was enacted the conflict in the Netherlands stamped on it not just history and maps but entire families - Rubens is father an Rubens was a lawyer from Antwerp and interestingly a Protestant a Calvinist and when the eighty years war broke out in 1568 this Yan Rubens had to flee from Antwerp to escape an invading Spanish army that had turned up to enforce Catholicism and kill the Protestants he fled here to Germany when there was plenty of work going for a Protestant lawyer unfortunately that's how he came into contact with this woman here Anna of Saxony the local princess who employed him to sort out some financial matters now this Anna of Saxony was fascinating but flawed very flawed she liked a drink and she liked men that's her new lover she chose young Rubens yan was also married he'd brought his wife with him from Antwerp but when a princess seduces you all the rules get broken don't they their affair was short and grubby Anna got pregnant and Yan Rubens was quickly imprisoned for the very very serious crime of adultery with a princess he was in jail for two years and when they finally let him out he moved back in with the wife he'd betrayed and proceeded to have more children with her including in 1577 the year an ER of Saxony died a son called Peter Paul Rubens [Music] now Rubens's mother Marie people links seems to have been a rather reluctant Calvinist and when the an Reubens also died in 1587 she took the family back to Antwerp where they returned to a fully Catholic life as if nothing had happened Rubens was 10 when he arrived in Antwerp he was put in a Catholic school and then trained as a painter if talent was obvious and the new rulers of the Spanish Netherlands the Habsburg Archduke Albert and Isabella were quick to notice him and make him a favorite but when you look at this early adamandeve painted soon after he finished his apprenticeship it's worth remembering that the sin of lust was embedded in his childhood that religion and its conflicts had stamped on his history and that his betrayed mother was the only religious constant he really knew why did Rubens paint so many Madonna's and children and why are they walked so soppy I think it's because they're personal very personal [Music] the Rubens family house was up here in Sint mickers drought just around the corner meanwhile in cluster strat lived the family of Yan Brant an Antwerp lawyer who had a vivacious daughter called Isabella Isabella Brant Isabella was charming Sparkie fun to be with and hard-working she liked to roll up her sleeves and get things done which is what Rubens like to do - she lived so close to him they could hardly fail to meet and soon enough they were courting not long after in 1609 they got married Rubens was 32 when he married Isabella she was 18 but that was normal at the time they moved into this big house here the Rubens house and as he was to do with all the people in his life Rubens began putting Isabella into his art [Music] sometimes he did it officially as in there touching wedding picture in the outer pinnacle tech in Munich Rubens and Isabella sitting in a honeysuckle Bower all loved up and content other times isabella is likely disguised here she is pretending to be the Virgin Mary looking after the baby Jesus and are pretty sure Jesus is actually their first son Albert born in 1614 and if I'm not wrong and I don't think I am isn't this higher as well gone blonde for a moment and popping up so cheek early as a jolly follower of Bacchus in one of Rubens is fleshy esteemeth ologies the drunken Salinas [Music] they were married for 18 years and to her early death in 1626 and in that time god only knows how many Isabella brands popped up surreptitiously in her husband's art in front of Rubens put on blinkers like those a horse where's John Augusto a Angra and groped that horse blinkers [Music] you don't need blinkers to look at Rubens what you need is a bigger telly is there anyone called Chris watching this film but Chris Froome the cyclist or Chris Martin the pop singer well if you are watching will you Chris is out there this bit of the film is dedicated to you [Music] Chris is of the world how often do you consider the true significance of your name what does Christopher really mean and what's it got to do with the stupendous Rubens masterpiece the descent from the cross in Antwerp Cathedral you have to follow me round here see that huge fellow up there on the back and the side wings that is st. Christopher and he's carrying Christ across the river because Christopher of course means carrier of Christ [Music] now say 'christopher was the patron saint of an organization called the Aqua bosses guild the our cabooses used these things our cabooses a big new gun that revolutionized warfare in the eighty years war here in the Spanish Netherlands with their endless wars the arquebus was constantly in use and in Antwerp the our cabooses had formed their own militia a kind of territorial army whose task was to defend the city and the president of this our cabooses guild was a man called Nicholas rocks that's him on the left standing behind the old man in 1611 rock Hawks and the our cabooses commissioned Rubens to paint a new altarpiece for Antwerp Cathedral it's his most famous painting and probably his greatest but to get back to all you christopher's out there this idea of carrying Christ is what unites all the bits of this dramatic and magnificent altarpiece so in the middle the dead body of Christ is being carried from the cross he suffered his terrible crucifixion and now it's time to bury him you can really feel the weight of his corpse can't you as all these helpers and apostles lower him down from the cross but it's these women at the foot of the cross towards whom it all seems to be slumping on the left at the bottom Mary of Cleophas so youthfully beautiful sheds a desperate tear next to her Mary Magdalene the reformed prostitute lets Jesus his foot rest on her shoulder and makes him suddenly appear weightless so everyone here is carrying Christ and that's what the central panel is about but over here on the Left Rubens wines back the clock to the time before Jesus is born to the so called visitation there's the Blessed Mary again the rather unlikely blonde with the red top and as you can see she's heavily pregnant she's come to visit her cousin Elizabeth and she's carrying Jesus in her womb [Music] these days the pictures always open but in Rubens is time it was often closed like that we st. Christopher over here and the old hermit on the other side and then when they opened it all this was revealed it's like 17th century cinema isn't it dramatic emotional vivid doll you christopher's out there I want to thank for this [Music] Nicholas Rowe Cox the president of the our cabooses who commissioned Rubens is great descent from the cross lived in this house here rock Hawks was the mayor of an to up several times a very powerful and influential man a good man for Rubens to have on his side and that's him there upon the left of this devotional tryptych that Rubens painted for him and his wife she's on the other side lucky old rock ops had Rubens is all round the house but the one I want to focus on now used to hang here above the fireplace where that Rubens Venus is now and in rock oxes time this position here was occupied by a very naughty picture a picture which calls a some music [Music] the story of Samson and Delilah is told in the book of Judges she was a woman from the valley of Sorek he was an Israelite famed for his great strength the Philistines traditional enemies of the Israelites promised Delilah money 1,100 pieces of silver to find out the secret of Samson's strength at first he resisted her too after a night of intense biblical lovemaking Samson could resist no more so Delilah finds out that the secret of Samson's strength is his long hair and in the Rubens painting the Philistines have just arrived at the door and they've brought a barber with them it's such an exciting picture Rubens doesn't just bring the Bible to life he sets it on fire and will you look at Samson exhausted by all that sweaty sex just lying there poleaxed look a goalkeeper who's banged his head against the post [Music] so Nicolas Rock hocks Commission's Rubens to paint a big warning about the seductive power of women and to put it above the mantelpiece here when no one can miss it and what does Rubens do well Rubens paints him one of the sexiest pictures in the whole of Baroque art an utterly tangible depiction of post-coital exhaustion [Music] and if you look around Rubens is art of these busy years you'll find lots of Delilah's scattered about his crowd scenes tempting the Samson's all these beautiful blondes don't just look like Delilah they are Delilah the same blonde model popping in and out of Rubens is art like a baroque Barbara Windsor in a carry-on sometimes as in this particularly violent depiction of the massacre of the innocence she's even wearing the same dress [Music] other times she's not [Music] so how does Rubens do it how does he make his art so vivid to find out I've wangled my way into a top secret Antwerp warehouse where a team of busy restorers is working on a Rubens Madonna it's painted as most of his best work was painted not on canvas but on wood Antwerp in fact the Antwerp school of painting is one of the few schools that is still painting onwards in the early 17th century the tradition of painting on wood in in Flanders had a long tradition of course since the times of Van Aken and Bruegel and on the the smooth panels every every brush stroke is visible and remains visible and so also the difference between these brush strokes so very smooth glazing areas but also the very upstanding very three-dimensional highlights that's a difference that I always notice with Rubens the surfaces look very kind of liquid almost as if they haven't quite solidified there's that brilliant sort of skating feeling all across the planes absolutely Rubens really love to paint on a smooth surface also on panel you could paint very differently so his painting on panel became more let's say atmospheric now let's talk about this wood where did it come from I think I read somewhere that a lot of it came from from my country from Poland well it comes sucked at exactly from Poland and the Baltic region it was let's say shift towards Antwerp and then when it arrived it was of course cut into planks and then panels were made and these panels had standard shapes they had standard formats when you look at Rubens though quite often you see the lines don't you you can still see the lines where the panels were so it wasn't made from one panel it was made from that has to do with the fact that Rubens when he developed his ideas was one of the first painters that didn't take the format for granted so while he's thinking about his composition he often enlarges it and a good example for this is the Madonna with a parrot which started as a smaller Madonna picture and then completely overworked completely over painted and so it became this very baroque very Italianate large piece maybe you can have a closer look as well really so the painting was started by Rubens in 1614 and the painting was in fact was a standing format from approximately here to there and high as such so just a Madonna and Child a Madonna and Child without a part with it st. Joseph's only the Madonna then the painting was still in his studio he didn't sell it apparently and then in 1630 he turned it into something which is far grander a farmer monumental so more an Italianate Venetian painting so interesting there so why would he bother doing that I mean you've got a picture here which you know by Rubens standards is quite modest why didn't he just start from scratch why would he begin to enlarge it never waste something that exists and transform it into your idiom of the moment I think he wants to get rid of an older Madonna he couldn't sell or he didn't sell and and makes her much more glorious pain absolutely I tell you what I really like here this red absolutely Rubens is red absolutely it's like good lipstick on her on a woman's like that's his color that's his color his balance of colors is always turning to the Reds the Reds are or his one of the big criticisms that's always leveled at Rubens is that he turned out too many pictures his studio was the biggest and busiest in Europe so there are a lot of Rubens is out there too many for one man to have painted so the worry is his assistants did it all for him it's true he was amazingly prolific and to achieve all that Rubens achieved did require the assistance of a busy studio but why is that so terrible we don't expect an architect to lay all his own bricks for a composer to play all the instruments so why in art are we so reluctant to admire a collaborative effort now this little picture is by Rubens and by Yann Bruegel so is this one and this one they're so petite look five exciting little pictures packed rammed with so much stuff they're actually allegories of the senses five of them each picture a different sense this one here with all the flowers that's the sense of smell the one with the telescope in it and all the magnifying gizmos that's sight and this one my favorite with Venus playing a lute and Cupid singing that's hearing the actual music that Venus and Cupid are playing in the picture and that you're listening to now is a Madrigal by the 16th century English composer Peter Phillips and all those notes on the table those are the actual notes the musical instruments are perfectly identifiable to the birds are all birds that are famous for talking the cause a cockatoos and under the keyboard a cheeky tucán to work out all the symbolism packed into these five paintings would take several hours so my advice to you is to come back here to the Prado one day and to spend the whole day in front of Bruegel and Rubens you'll really enjoy it why is Rubens working with Bruegel who did what in these exciting allegories and why Bruegel was renowned as a still-life painter and he specialized in these busy allegories was actually taught to paint miniatures by his grandmother and some of the detail in this picture is so fine that he had to paint it with a brush that only had one hair so most of what you see here was painted by Bruegel who'd lay out the picture and packaged with details but he'd leave empty spaces for Venus and Cupid and the picture was then taken round the corner to Ruben's his studio and Rubens would put in the figures what an extraordinary way to make pictures the question is why bother [Music] it certainly wasn't because briegel couldn't do the figures himself in his own art like this bustling country road in Brabant Bruegel was perfectly capable of doing all sorts of figures boydle didn't collaborate with blubins because he couldn't do figures Bruegel collaborated with Rubens his friend and neighbor because their joint achievement was more valuable than an individual achievement Roy girl pulled Rubens in a different direction their shared accomplishment was something more than a solo accomplishment and his collaboration really such a bad thing when it gives us art as good this Blake you must agree that Rubens was a fool and yet you make him master of your school Rubens a fool he just doesn't get it does he just doesn't get it Rubens was anything but a fool if he'd never been a painter he'd still have been an important figure in another crucial field of European history politics Rubens was the most politically active and powerful artist there's ever been he was the Henry Kissinger of his times to have achieved what he did in politics while keeping down his day job as Europe's greatest painter was remarkable to give you a sense of the twisted political realities of Rubens 'as world here's his head of Medusa painted in 1617 C Medusa's hair how knotted and slimy and slippery it is well the politics of Rubens is world were like that to understand what was going on in Rubens is day between Spain France England the Spanish Netherlands and the breakaway Dutch provinces you don't just need a degree in history you need to be pretty good at geometry too and biology it's very complicated Isobella the ruler of the Spanish Netherlands was married to her cousin Albert so they were both Hapsburgs and together they ruled the Spanish Netherlands and this Habsburg connection is crucial because Isabella was also the daughter Philip the second the Habsburg king of Spain who you may remember was King of England too when he briefly married Queen Mary the daughter of Henry the eighth now Philips dream was to restore Catholicism to England that's what he sent over the Spanish Armada to conquer England however back in the Spanish Netherlands Philips daughter Isabella didn't want war with England she wanted peace because his a Bella's dream was to restore a United Netherlands and that's also what Rubens wanted in 1621 Albert Isabella's husband and cousin died and that left Isabella as the sole ruler of the Spanish Netherlands and so heartbroken was she by Albert's death that she retired from courtly life and became a nun a Poor Clare as they were called from now on she ran the country from a monastery with the help of her closest political adviser her court painter Rubens it's the greatest artists in Europe Rubens was welcomed at every port everyone wanted to be painted by him and while he was painting them well there was lots of time wasn't there to discuss a bit of politics share some confidences make a couple of suggestions back at the eighty years war Isabella helping to achieve peace needed Spain to Ally herself with her historic enemy England so she sent her best diplomat Rubens to Spain where his task was to persuade to the new Spanish King Philip the 4th there was Isabella's nephew to enter into a new alliance with Charles the 1st and England and that's why in 1629 having smooth-talked Philip the fourth round to Isabella's way of thinking Rubens arrived in London and set about charming Charles the first as well this was actually painted by Rubens is greatest pupil and Dyck it still hangs in Buckingham Palace today how do you get a king to eat out of your hand you put him on a big white horse and give him the bearing of a mighty warrior it's what's called the Rubens [Music] and it didn't stop there to ingratiate himself further with Charles the first Rubens offered to paint the ceiling of this famous building here Inigo Jones's banqueting house in white it's the only great painted ceiling by Rubens that still in sits you in the place for which it was painted all this art all this effort and time and invention lavished on England in the pursuit of peace [Music] do you know what it worked all this cunning artistic diplomacy by Rubens worked and to thank Rubens for his diplomatic services Charles knighted him and also gave him a diamond studded headband for his hat for Rubens though enough was enough he was a painter not a diplomat having successfully engineered a peace between Britain and Spain the Henry Kissinger of the Baroque returned to Antwerp and gave up politics forever from now on Rubens his attention was claimed fully by his day job and by the other great love of his life women [Music] Isabella Brandt had died of the plague in 1626 and a lonely Rubens needed to find a new wife the one he found lnform on would become one of the most painted women in art lnform or was 16 when she married Rubens and he was 53 and in those days it was less of an issue but it was still unexpected Rubens his friends thought he'd choose a countess or maybe a duchess that's how high he'd climbed up the social ladder instead he chose the daughter of a tapestry salesman homely unpretentious and beautiful in a full-bodied Flemish way Rubens was always a very sensual painter very physical unusually physical and his art often makes very clear how much he enjoyed the pleasurable side of marriage Ellen for Mom begins to appear and reappear in his pictures with remarkable frequency sometimes she's a country girl sometimes a goddess sometimes she's all over the place and pops up throughout the picture and sometimes she's entirely undisguised Rubens his wife mother of his children the woman he loves [Music] this is the most notorious of his depictions of her lnform or in a fur coat it's notorious because well you can see why can't you it's not every day that a great painter shows us his wife like this she's just had a bath and as she steps towards us she's grabbed a handy bit of fur and wrapped it round herself to cover herself up but the furs not doing very well is it there's more of Helen form on poking out than poking in it's actually another clever bit of role-playing she's meant to be Venus the goddess of love the most famous woman ever to step out of the sea naked and wet and it's Venus in a particular guys what they call Venus hoody car the shy Venus it's the same Venus that Botticelli painted in his most famous picture coming out of the sea covering herself up so shyly but look how vividly Rubens updates her shyness how real he makes it there's an awkwardness to her isn't there as there would be if you had to stand about like that but the fur coat that's a brilliant touch which plucks her out of the clouds and brings her right back down to earth in Antwerp in the 1630s I love her dimply knees and that soft tummy of hers that's not the tummy of a goddess that's the tummy of a real woman Rubens has cast his wife as the Venus of Antwerp but he's also worshipping her evident humanity a happy man in a happy marriage is making clear in his art how he feels about the woman he loves isn't that marvelous I think we need a summary to count up all the things that Rubens achieved one he painted some of the most exciting and dramatic religious art of the Baroque era - he painted some very entertaining mythologies and broke world records fulfilling his pictures with cheeky cherubs and fleshy nudes three he was a great portraitist his portraits are so vivid and compelling particularly his portraits of his wives how touching they are for size-wise his scale is unchallenged no one painted art as big in his ambitious as Rubens is art which takes me straight to number five which is how madly inventive he was everywhere you look in Rubens something remarkable is going six technically he was as good as any painter has ever been a wizard of the paintbrush who made the paint sing and the colors dance seven he collaborated with some of the best artists of his time and the results of this exciting pictorial democracy a glorious eight and this is something I haven't even had time to deal with yet but believe it or not Rubens designed wonderful tapestries and at the convent of the Poor Clares in Madrid you get a really good sense of how big and spectacular his tapestries were nine and I haven't been able to fit this in either he was an architect and the Church of the Jesuits in Antwerp with that superb facade that was Rubens his handiwork to so here's a man who could achieve all that surely he couldn't do any more well actually he could because Rubens was also a great landscape painter that his number 10 when Rubens married Ellen for more they moved out here to the chateau de Steen the great country house they shared so happily where Rubens is art put on its wellies and began filling its lungs with fresh country air this part of Flanders around the Chateau de Steen is called Brabant and this was his inspiration oh look some gold finches look a Kingfisher in his revolutionary landscapes Rubens is brush explores the Brabant countryside like a puppy dog no one had painted landscapes as fresh and areas these before and look how big they are and how far away the horizon sees in these endless he did night scenes too there's a particularly beautiful one that the court old galleries in London the evening sky twinkling with dreamy stars and such a gorgeous atmosphere of romance Rubens that is so pious melting the hardest heart but he could do storms to their some of the fiercest in art you wouldn't want to be out in a Rubin storm Rubens is views from his window celebrate nature's many moods having reinvented everything else Ruben's at his final contribution reinvents the landscape - that's the kind of man we're dealing with here [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Perspective

Views: 161,717

Rating: 4.8666668 out of 5

Keywords: Arts, The Arts, Theatre, Music, Full EPisode, Full documentary, documentary, performing arts, art history, waldemar januszczak, art documentary, history documentary, waldemar januszczak documentary, documentary history, documentary movies - topic, art history documentary, contemporary art, rubens art, Peter Paul Rubens, peter paul rubens paintings, peter paul rubens sketches, peter paul rubens elevation of the cross, peter paul rubens life, baroque art, baroque painting

Id: dr5C7VCS_EE

Length: 58min 20sec (3500 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 16 2020