Artist of the Day, May 20, 2024: Peter Paul Rubens, a Flemish painter - Baroque (#2028)

 Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577 – 1640) was a Flemish artist. He is considered the most influential artist of Flemish Baroque tradition. Rubens' highly charged compositions reference erudite aspects of classical and Christian history. His unique and immensely popular Baroque style emphasized movement, color, and sensuality, which followed the immediate, dramatic artistic style promoted in the Counter-Reformation. Rubens specialized in making altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects.

In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp that produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically educated humanist scholar and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV of Spain and Charles I of England. Rubens was a prolific artist. The catalogue of his works by Michael Jaffé lists 1,403 pieces, excluding numerous copies made in his workshop.

His commissioned works were mostly "history paintings", which included religious and mythological subjects, and hunt scenes. He painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house. He also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the royal entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635.

His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not overly detailed. He also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. He was one of the last major artists to make consistent use of wooden panels as a support medium, even for very large works, but he used canvas as well, especially when the work needed to be sent a long distance. For altarpieces he sometimes painted on slate to reduce reflection problems.

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 Sir Peter Paul Rubens (Self-Portrait)

 His wife and child

 Adam and Eve, circa 1597

 The Battle of the Standard, circa 1603

Satyr with girl and basket of fruit, circa 1612

Two Satyrs, circa 1612

Two sleeping children, circa 1612

 Jupiter and Callisto, circa 1613

 The Triumph of Victory, circa 1613

 The Death of Adonis, circa 1614

A hunt of lions, tigers and leopards, circa 1615

 Christ and John the Baptist as children and two angels, circa 1615

 Assumption of Mary, circa 1616

Portrait of a young boy with a bird, circa 1616

River landscape with Pan and Syrinx, circa 1616

 The rape of the daughters of Leucippus, circa 1616

Cimon and Efigenia, circa 1617

 The Flagellation of Christ, circa 1617

Three nymphs filling a Cornucopia, circa 1617

Madonna and Child with Saint Elizabeth and the Young Saint John, circa 1618

Neptune and Ceres the union of water and earth, circa 1618

 Portrait of Maximilian I of Habsburg, circa 1618

 Pythagoras advocating vegetarianism, circa 1618

 Christ in the house of Mary and Martha, circa 1619

Nicolaas Rubens with coral necklace, circa 1619

 The Adoration of the Magi,  circa 1619

 Boreas abducting Orithyia, circa 1620

 Head of the Oldest of the Three Kings (The Greek Magus, Caspar), circa 1620

The Three Graces, circa 1620

 Portrait of Isabella Brant, circa 1621