Culture | Rubens

A man of many tints

Reassessing a great European artist


IN THE popular imagination, Rubens (1577-1640) is a painter of well-fed ladies with rich flesh tones. But this year a series of exhibitions in his home town of Antwerp, in the nearby city of Lille and elsewhere across Europe seek to show him as a more well-rounded artist (as it were), a man who also painted an equal number of sober political and religious subjects with a wealth of inventive detail. The Lille exhibition, which runs at the newly restored Palais des Beaux-Arts until June 14th, is already breaking records, a testament to the artist's enduring popularity.

The confidante of kings and queens, a diplomat, scholar and art collector who travelled widely across Europe, Rubens was a genuinely European genius. Even his name—Pietro Paul—mixed two different languages, and the artist himself spoke six. The child of Protestants exiled from Antwerp, he was born in Germany. But when his father died, his mother moved back to her family in Antwerp and reverted to Catholicism. A product of both religious cultures, with first-hand experience of their bloody wars, Rubens was well equipped when called upon (in 1628) to broker a peace between Catholic Spain and Protestant England.

In his art Rubens was a pan-European too. He trained first with the Flemish masters in Antwerp, copying Holbein's woodcuts, before crossing the Alps to travel through Italy for eight years. He lived in Genoa for a spell, which is why that city (like Lille, a “European Capital of Culture” this year) is claiming him as an adopted son in a show of his work that continues until July 11th. As court painter to the Gonzagas dynasty in Mantua, Rubens absorbed all the art and antiquities that he could feast his eyes upon in their world-famous collections.

In Rome he copied the Vatican's classical sculptures, as well as Caravaggio's altarpieces; in Venice he admired the works of Titian and Veronese. He would have stayed in Italy indefinitely had his mother not called him home from her deathbed. When he arrived in Antwerp, he was received as a returning hero. The Archduchess Isabella begged him to become her court painter and gave him a castle and a title. Alongside his Flemish burgher's house he built an Italian palazzo for his studio and his art collection.

And it is here, in Rubens's own house, that the centrepiece of the Rubens Year is to be seen: a reconstruction of the artist's own art collection. The exhibition (showing until June 13th) mixes well-known masterpieces with works by artists beloved by Rubens but almost unknown today. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see what the great artist learned from, and what he cherished.

It is particularly revealing to see his copies of Titian alongside their originals. Whereas the Venetian master portrayed the brutality of the myth of Diana and Callisto, Rubens invested the scene with compassion. And it is this human touch that made him famous. One of his earliest masterpieces, the life-size “Deposition of Christ” in Antwerp Cathedral, portrays the dead Jesus with a contorted, bloodless body modelled on a famous sculpture of Hercules in Rome. But the descent of the heroic figure into the arms of his bearers could move a stone, and it has inspired generations of artists with its message of eternal love and compassion.

To see such works in their original setting is a special treat. But there is more. Most of the paintings in his Antwerp house were made either early in Rubens's career, when he was building his reputation, or for his family and friends. So they are all done by Rubens himself, rather than by his army of studio assistants. An astute businessman, Rubens had a complex pricing structure which was based on how much of a painting he did himself. Cheaper works were executed by the assistants who helped him in his studio.

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline "A man of many tints"

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From the May 15th 2004 edition

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