Peter Paul Rubens :: essays research papers

Peter Paul Rubens was the painter of the inaugural part of the 17th Century in Catholic Europe. How he became so is an interesting story. Rubens was educated to be a humanist but analogous all great artists choose his profession for himself. The gang of first-rate neoclassic education with an innate visual genius made for an unprecedented combination in an artist. It has been said that no artist has ever been as tumefy educated as Rubens. After training with three minor artists in Antwerp. Rubens set off for Italy to complete his education a position at the court of the Duke of Mantua was quickly accepted and he stayed in Italy for eight years. His subscriber line was to travel to all the major artistic collections, especially Rome and Venice characterization copies of famous works of art, especially depictions of beautiful women, for the Dukes collection. He was also direct to Spain where he had an opportunity to study the enormous collection of Titian masterworks in the proud Collection in Madrid. Copying the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance especially and the belatedly unearthed sculptures of classical antiquity, Rubens sketched and painted and encompassed all that was best in Italian and upright art. Rubens combined the lessons of Antique Sculpture with the vaunting ambition of the High Renaissance giants in an unprecedented way. He used the plastic lessons of sculpture as a composition model but insisted that chassis should look like flesh in a painting thus developing his breakthrough come to the naked body. In this he never forgot the earthy luminous naturalism of the old Netherlandish tradition of the 15th and 16th century (Van Eyck, Van Weyden, Breughel). You wont evaluate Rubens the master of the female nude until you consider that he was the greatest lure on French painting from the 18th to the 20th century Watteau, Fragonard, Delacroix, and Renoir were his among his firm followers. Rubens was to develop a phenomenal ability to analyze the different styles of painting and sculpture and then synthesis them into whatever his clients wanted. His clients included just nearly every Catholic monarch, as well as Catholic propensity Protestants like King Charles I of England, and every major religious rule in Western Europe. Not to mention every wealthy amateur of painting. To satisfy an ever growing demand Rubens opened the largest art store Europe has ever seen he would paint an small initial inunct sketch which when approved and contracted for would be given over to unrivalled or more of his students to paint the full length canvas, finally Rubens would kick in the finishing touches and sign it.