Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641) were the twin geniuses whose works and multifaceted careers shaped and determined art production in Flanders—and in much of Europe—in their own lifetimes, and whose enduring achievements still largely define our understanding of Baroque painting to the present day. Few artists have ever had as broad or lasting an impact on the development of the western art tradition.
Rubens was a generation older than Van Dyck, who began his career as Rubens’s most talented pupil and assistant, but the reputations of the two men remain closely associated with each other, and their lives, especially throughout the second decade of the 1600s, were intimately intertwined. Peter Paul Rubens was born on 28 June 1577 in Siegen, Germany, to Calvinist parents who had fled Antwerp a decade earlier. His father, Jan Rubens, was a lawyer and magistrate. The family subsequently moved to Cologne, where they remained until Jan’s death in 1587, after which his widow returned to Antwerp to live with her two sons. Rubens attended the Latin school in Antwerp, where he received an excellent education in the classics and modern languages, concluding his formal education around the age of thirteen. His aptitude in the fine arts led him to apprenticeships with several local artists associated with the guild of St. Luke, notably Otto van Veen (circa 1594–98), who trained him in the craft of painting. Rubens became a master in the guild in 1598, aged 21.
In May 1600, fulfilling a long-held ambition, Rubens set out on an extended sojourn through Italy, stopping first in Venice, where he was exposed first-hand to the masterpieces of Titian and Tinteretto, before settling in Mantua, as court painter to Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga. He held the post until 1608, having not only access to the masterpieces by Titian, Correggio and Raphael in the Duke’s celebrated collection, but the freedom to travel to Florence and Rome, where he studied the major monuments of Antiquity and the High Renaissance. In 1603–04, Rubens was sent by the Duke of Mantua as his envoy to the royal court in Madrid, launching what would become a lifelong side-career in international diplomacy.
Following word of his mother’s impending death, Rubens rushed back to Antwerp early in December 1608. Five months after returning to his native Flanders, the Southern Netherlands ended a long and bitter conflict with the secessionist Dutch Protestant Republic, ushering in a prolonged period of political stability and economic prosperity, the likes of which the region had not experienced for half a century. In September 1609, Rubens was appointed court painter to the Archduke and Archduchess Albert and Isabella, Hapsburg Governors-General of the Spanish Netherlands, securing for himself a large annual pension and exemption from the restrictive regulations of the local guild. A crucial element of the archduke’s campaign to reconvert the Spanish Netherlands to Catholicism was the founding of new churches and the refurbishment of old ones, for which Rubens was commissioned to provide numerous altarpieces and large-scale church decorations. Among the first and most important of these projects was the magisterial triptych, The Raising of the Cross (Antwerp Cathedral) for the High Altar of St. Walburga in 1610–11 and an equally ambitious pendant made for a chapel in the Cathedral, The Descent from the Cross (also Antwerp Cathedral), in 1611–14. Directly inspired by the altarpieces of Tintoretto, Michelangelo and Caravaggio that he had studied in Italy, Rubens created a new and monumental kind of painting that was startlingly naturalistic, lucid, and emotionally raw, and would inspire the devotion and piety required of Catholics by Counter-Reformation ideals. Vast in scale, including dozens of over-life-sized figures interlocked in twisting poses of tortured suffering and pious grief, such paintings required the participation of a large stable of able assistants and collaborators for their execution. From the outset of his career in Antwerp, Rubens would, of necessity, oversee the running of a large workshop.
Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641) were the twin geniuses whose works and multifaceted careers shaped and determined art production in Flanders—and in much of Europe—in their own lifetimes, and whose enduring achievements still largely define our understanding of Baroque painting to the present day. Few artists have ever had as broad or lasting an impact on the development of the western art tradition.
Rubens was a generation older than Van Dyck, who began his career as Rubens’s most talented pupil and assistant, but the reputations of the two men remain closely associated with each other, and their lives, especially throughout the second decade of the 1600s, were intimately intertwined. Peter Paul Rubens was born on 28 June 1577 in Siegen, Germany, to Calvinist parents who had fled Antwerp a decade earlier. His father, Jan Rubens, was a lawyer and magistrate. The family subsequently moved to Cologne, where they remained until Jan’s death in 1587, after which his widow returned to Antwerp to live with her two sons. Rubens attended the Latin school in Antwerp, where he received an excellent education in the classics and modern languages, concluding his formal education around the age of thirteen. His aptitude in the fine arts led him to apprenticeships with several local artists associated with the guild of St. Luke, notably Otto van Veen (circa 1594–98), who trained him in the craft of painting. Rubens became a master in the guild in 1598, aged 21.
In May 1600, fulfilling a long-held ambition, Rubens set out on an extended sojourn through Italy, stopping first in Venice, where he was exposed first-hand to the masterpieces of Titian and Tinteretto, before settling in Mantua, as court painter to Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga. He held the post until 1608, having not only access to the masterpieces by Titian, Correggio and Raphael in the Duke’s celebrated collection, but the freedom to travel to Florence and Rome, where he studied the major monuments of Antiquity and the High Renaissance. In 1603–04, Rubens was sent by the Duke of Mantua as his envoy to the royal court in Madrid, launching what would become a lifelong side-career in international diplomacy.
Following word of his mother’s impending death, Rubens rushed back to Antwerp early in December 1608. Five months after returning to his native Flanders, the Southern Netherlands ended a long and bitter conflict with the secessionist Dutch Protestant Republic, ushering in a prolonged period of political stability and economic prosperity, the likes of which the region had not experienced for half a century. In September 1609, Rubens was appointed court painter to the Archduke and Archduchess Albert and Isabella, Hapsburg Governors-General of the Spanish Netherlands, securing for himself a large annual pension and exemption from the restrictive regulations of the local guild. A crucial element of the archduke’s campaign to reconvert the Spanish Netherlands to Catholicism was the founding of new churches and the refurbishment of old ones, for which Rubens was commissioned to provide numerous altarpieces and large-scale church decorations. Among the first and most important of these projects was the magisterial triptych, The Raising of the Cross (Antwerp Cathedral) for the High Altar of St. Walburga in 1610–11 and an equally ambitious pendant made for a chapel in the Cathedral, The Descent from the Cross (also Antwerp Cathedral), in 1611–14. Directly inspired by the altarpieces of Tintoretto, Michelangelo and Caravaggio that he had studied in Italy, Rubens created a new and monumental kind of painting that was startlingly naturalistic, lucid, and emotionally raw, and would inspire the devotion and piety required of Catholics by Counter-Reformation ideals. Vast in scale, including dozens of over-life-sized figures interlocked in twisting poses of tortured suffering and pious grief, such paintings required the participation of a large stable of able assistants and collaborators for their execution. From the outset of his career in Antwerp, Rubens would, of necessity, oversee the running of a large workshop.
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