Flemish painter, considered the most important of the 17th century,
whose style came to define the animated, exuberantly sensuous aspects
of baroque painting. Combining the bold brushwork, luminous color, and
shimmering light of the Venetian school with the vigor of the art of
Michelangelo and the formal dynamism of Hellenistic sculpture, Rubens
created a vibrant style, with an energy that emanates from tensions
between the intellectual and the emotional, the classical and the romantic.
For more than two centuries after his death, the vitality and eloquence
of his work continued to influence such artists as Jean-Antoine Watteau
in the early 18th century and Eugene Delacroix and Pierre Auguste Renoir
in the 19th century.
Rubens's father, Jan Rubens, was a prominent lawyer and Antwerp alderman
who converted from Catholicism to Calvinism. In 1568 he left Flanders
with his family to escape persecutions against Protestants. Peter Paul
was born in exile in Siegen, Westphalia (now in Germany), also the birthplace
of his brother Philip and his sister Baldina. In Westphalia, Jan Rubens
became the adviser and lover of Princess Anna of Saxony, wife of Prince
William I of Orange (William the Silent).
When Jan Rubens died in 1587, his widow returned the family to Antwerp,
where she and the children became Catholics. After studying the classics
in a Latin school and serving as a court page, Peter Paul decided to
become a painter. He apprenticed in turn with Tobias Verhaecht, Adam
van Noort, and Otto van Veen, called Vaenius, three minor Flemish painters
influenced by 16th-century Mannerist artists of the Florentine-Roman
school. The young Rubens was as precocious a painter as he had been
a scholar of modern European languages and classical antiquity. In 1598,
at the age of 21, he was accorded the rank of master painter of the
Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke.
Shortly thereafter, following the example of many northern European
artists of the period, Rubens traveled to Italy, the center of European
art for the previous two centuries. In 1600 he arrived in Venice, where
he was particularly inspired by the paintings of Titian, Paolo Veronese,
and Tintoretto. Later, while living in Rome, he was influenced by the
works of Michelangelo and Raphael, as well as by ancient Greco-Roman
sculpture.
Vincenzo Gonzaga, the duke of Mantua, employed Rubens for about nine
years. Rubens copied Renaissance paintings for the ducal collection,
but he was also able to execute original works. In 1605 he served as
the duke's emissary to King Philip III of Spain.