Peter+Paul+Rubens

Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish Baroque painter, and an influential artist of the extravagant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He was well-known for his Counter-Reformation alterpieces, portraits, landscapes, history paintings of mythological, and allegorical subjects. Peter Paul Rubens was influenced by the contributions of the masters of the Renaissance, Michelangleo and Titian, and of the Italian Baroque, Caracci and Caravaggio to create his own style of art that was the first truly pan-European manner. (Peter Paul Rubens' self-portrait)

=__His Life:__= Rubens was born in Siegen,Germany to Jan Rubens and Maria Pypelincks on June 28, 1577 and eventually died on May 30, 1640. Before Peter Paul Rubens' birth, his gamily fled from Flanders to Germany with his family escaping Spanish religious protestant persecution. He later returned to Flanders at the age of ten, and became a devout Catholic, where he lived with his mother because his father had died two years after his birth. Religion was featured prominently in much of his work and Rubens later became one of the leading voices of the Catholic Counter-Reformation style of painting. Later on in his life at age fourteen, Peter Paul Rubens began artistic skills by studying under the city's two leading painters at the time, late Mannerist artists Adam van Noort and Otto van Veen. Much of his earliest training involved copying earlier artists' works, such as woodcuts by Hans Holbein the Younger and Marcantonio Raimondi's engravings after Raphael. Rubens completed his education in 1598, at which time he entered the Guild of St. Luke as an independent master. Because Flanders was still under the influence of Spain; artists were able to rely on commissions sponsored by the Catholic Church and the State. Peter Paul Rubens studied Renaissance art in Italy eight years after becoming a master. Returning to Flanders once in a while to take care of family situations, Rubens received a Regency appointment to become the court painter. He improved his art career through government contacts receiving commissions from private patrons as well.

=__**Artworks:**__= __The Raising of the Cross-__ One of his famous paintings was "//The Raising of the Cross",// it was a triptych that was painted between 1609-1610. The heroic strong and muscular body and the tremendous power the figures have to do to just raise up the cross resembles the similar style of Michealanglo. The high contrast lighting on the the central figure, which is Jesus, and the tramatic tension is usually a characteristic of Caravaggio's paintings. __The Descent from the Cross-__ A similar triptych, with a reverse diagonal art composition from "//The Raising of the Cross"// is //"The Descent from the Cross"// painted between 1611-14. A painting on an alterpiece in Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp, Belgium. This artwork has stronger contrasting light on Christ, which is again similar to that of Caravaggio's style of artwork. The emotional drama is toned down because of the sympathy for the death of Jesus.

__The Garden of Love-__ In 1638 he painted one of his famous paintings in art history //"The Garden of Love//", after rediscovering a painting by Titian. "//The Garden of Love//", is a reminder of Titian's "Bacchanal", painted in 1518. Rubens' figures are not the classical style of Titian, but are actually contemporary figures intermixed with grounded and flying cupids. In this artwork, Rubens commemorates and celebrates his marriage for his second wife, Helena Fourment.

__Allegory of the Outbreak of War-__ Rubens was also vastly interested into European politic, but throughout his attempts in his artworks he was never able to achieve peace. War was constant during his throughout most of his career as a artist. It was commissioned in 1638 to produce a painting for Ferdinando II, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, so Rubens took this oppurtunity to express his attitude towards war. The fluid human forms and the energy that comes from this chaotic scene is present in most of Rubens' other artworks.