Pierre Paul Rubens (pronounced [ʁybɛ̃s], or [ʁybɛns] in Belgian) — or Petrus Paulus Rubens1, or Peter Paul Rubens2 in Dutch, and Pietro Paolo Rubens from 1608 — is a Brabant painter of the Flemish Baroque school, born June 28, 1577 in Siegen (principality of Nassau-Dillenbourg) and died on May 30, 1640 in Antwerp.

Helped by a large workshop, Rubens produced considerable work in various genres. He agreed to paint a large number of portraits but, “instinctively more inclined to large works than to small curiosities” as he himself wrote, he paid little attention to details, which he did not paint in depth and drew with a few strokes. Indeed, he worked at an extremely productive pace, producing 1403 paintings according to Michel Jaffé's catalog. He mainly produces large religious projects, mythological paintings, and important series of historical paintings. Prized by the Great for the erudition and the charm of his conversation, he also played an important diplomatic role in his time and enjoyed a social position without equal among the artists of his time3,4.
Biography
Childhood of Cologne and Antwerp (1577-1600)
Under the honeysuckle arbor, painting by Rubens with Isabella Brant.
Munich, Alte Pinakothek.

Peter Paul Rubens was born in Siegen in Westphalia, in the Holy Roman Empire, 300 km from Antwerp5. He was the sixth child of Jan Rubens (1530-1587), a prosperous Protestant lawyer appointed alderman of the city of Antwerp in 1562, and of Maria Pypelinckx (1537-1608), daughter of a tapestry merchant. His parents left Antwerp (Spanish Netherlands) in 1568 to escape the persecution of Protestants in the Spanish Netherlands by the Duke of Alba during the Beggars' Revolt, Jan Rubens being suspected of Calvinist sympathy6. Jan Rubens became William of Orange's legal advisor and moved to the court of Siegen in 1570. Due to his relationship with Anne of Saxony, second wife of William of Orange with whom he had a daughter, Christine von Diez (whom William did not recognize), born August 22, 1571, Jan Rubens was imprisoned at Dillenburg Castle until 1573, his release being due to the intervention of his wife7.

Rubens spent his first ten years in Siegen. Having renounced Protestantism for Catholicism, Jan Rubens probably had his son baptized in the Catholic faith before his death in 1587. Maria and her three children Pierre Paul, Blandine (1564-1606) and Philippe (1574-1611) then settled in Cologne. In 1589, two years after the death of his father, Rubens and his mother returned to Antwerp. His godmother is Christine d'Épinoy, Countess of Lallaing and wife of the governor of Tournai, where he entered as a page after his studies in the Latin School of Rumoldus Verdonck where he learned Latin and Greek8. It was at his godmother's house that Rubens began to copy the paintings present in her home, notably of Veronese, abandoning his hopes of a lawyer's dress and weapons.

Many of his paintings depict religious subjects and Rubens later became one of the leading voices in the pictorial style of the Catholic Counter-Reformation9.

In Antwerp, he received a humanist education, studying Latin and classical literature. At the age of 14, he was apprenticed from 1589 to 1598, first to the painter Tobias Verhaecht, then to some eminent painters of his time, among others Adam van Noort and Otto van Veen. Much of his early training was spent copying the works of ancient artists, such as woodcuts by Holbein the Younger and engravings by Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael. When he had completed his training, in 1598 he entered the guild of Saint-Luc as an independent master.
The stay in Italy (1600-1608)
Equestrian portrait of the Duke of Lerme, 1603,
oil on canvas, 290.5 × 207.5 cm, Madrid, Prado Museum.
Portrait of Rubens in the Ganay Manuscript.

On the advice of these eminent painters, Rubens left for Italy from 1600 to 1608 to study the works of the Renaissance10. He stayed in particular in Genoa, Mantua, Venice and Rome where he assimilated the various styles and copied the works of Raphael, Caravaggio, and especially Titian, whose fiery coloring he retained. He then settled in the city of Mantua, under the protection of Cardinal Montalto in the service of Duke Vincent de Gonzaga for whom he became court painter. Thanks to the Duke's financial support, Rubens was able to travel to Rome via Florence in 1601. There he studied classical Greek and Roman art and made copies of great Italian masters. He is particularly influenced by the Hellenistic sculpture The Laocoon Group, but also by the works of art of Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci11. He was also influenced by the more modern and naturalistic paintings of Caravaggio, whose painting The Entombment he later copied, while recommending to his protector, the Duke of Gonzaga, to buy another work by this artist, The Death of the Virgin, now kept at the Louvre12. He intervened to encourage the acquisition of The Madonna of the Rosary for the Dominican church in Antwerp, and which is today in the Museum of Art History in Vienna. During his first stay in Rome, Rubens created his first masterpiece, Saint Helena with the True Cross for the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem.

In 1603, Rubens traveled to Spain on a diplomatic mission, bringing with him gifts from the Duke of Gonzaga to the Court of King Philip III of Spain. During his stay, he studied the impressive collection of works by Raphël and Titian that Philip II had assembled13. He also created an equestrian portrait of the Duke of Lermo which clearly illustrates the influence of the works of Titian. This trip was the first of many trips that he made during his career and during which he mixed art and diplomacy14.
Isabella Brant, 1620-1625, Cleveland Museum of Art.

He returned to Italy in 1604, where he remained for the next four years, first in Mantua, then in Genoa and Rome where he distinguished himself in religious painting, mythological scenes and portraits. In Genoa, Rubens painted numerous portraits such as the Portrait of Brigida Spinola Doria in the National Gallery in Washington, and the Portrait of Maria Serra Pallavicino, in a style that later influenced artists such as Van Dyck, Reynolds and Gainsborough15. He also wrote an illustrated book on the city's palaces which was published in 1622 under the name Palazzi di Genova. From 1606 to 1608 he remained mainly in Rome and during this period Rubens obtained, with the help of Cardinal Jacopo Serra (brother of Princess Maria Pallavicini), his most important commission at the time for the high altar of the Vogue new church, the Chiesa Nuova also called Santa Maria in Vallicella.

The subject is Pope Gregory the Great as well as major local saints worshiping the icon of the Virgin and Child. The first version of this painting is a canvas which is currently at the Museum of Fine Arts in Grenoble, and which is immediately replaced by a second version on three slate panels representing the miraculous image of the Santa Maria in Vallicella which is shown to the public during religious festivals thanks to a removable copper cover, also painted by the artist16.

Rubens' Italian experience continued to influence his work and he continued to write numerous letters and correspondence in Italian. On his return to Antwerp in December 1608 where his mother was dying17, the memory of Italy was also perpetuated in his signature18, which would never change: “Pietro Paolo Rubens”. His travels also allowed him to understand French, German, Italian, Spanish and Latin.
The return to Antwerp (1609-1621)

In 1608, learning that his mother was ill, Rubens decided to leave Italy to join her in Antwerp, but she died before he arrived. His return coincided with a period of prosperity in the city, thanks to the signing of the Treaty of Antwerp in April 1609 which ended the war between Spain and the United Provinces and opened a twelve-year period of truce. In September 1609, Rubens was appointed official court painter to Albert and Isabella, rulers of the Netherlands from 1609 to 1621. He received special permission to set up his workshop in Antwerp rather than at the Court of Brussels, but also to work for clients other than just sovereigns. This period of prosperity and the opening of his large workshop as well as that of Jacob Jordaens launched what would be called the Antwerp School19. He remained close to Archduchess Isabella until her death in 1633, and he was called upon as a painter, but also as an ambassador and diplomat. Rubens further cemented his ties with the city when, on October 3, 1609, he married Isabella Brant, daughter of Jan Brant, an influential and humanist citizen of Antwerp. From this union three children were born: Serena (1611), Albert (1618) and Nicolas (1619)20.
Prometheus Tortured work produced between 1611 and 1612 with the collaboration of Frans Snyders, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

In 1610, Rubens moved to a new residence, a palace that he had built and where he lived for a large part of his life, the Rubenshuis, now a museum. The Italian-influenced villa houses his studio where he and his apprentices created most of the artist's paintings, and which also houses his personal art collection and one of the largest libraries in Antwerp. During this period, he developed his workshop by welcoming numerous students and assistants. His best-known student was Antoine van Dyck, who quickly became the leading Flemish portrait painter and who frequently collaborated with Rubens. He also worked with several other artists active in the city, notably the animal painter Frans Snyders who helped create the eagle in the painting Prometheus Tortured, but also his excellent friend, the flower painter Jan Brueghel the Elder.
Saint Sebastian rescued by angels painted after 1604, at the Rubenshuis.

Rubens also built another house north of Antwerp in the village of Doel, next to the church. This residence, called De Hooghuis (the big house), was built between 1613 and 1643, and undoubtedly constitutes an investment.

It was during this period that Rubens composed masterpieces such as The Erection of the Cross (1610) and The Descent from the Cross (1611-1614) for the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp, paintings which helped establish Rubens as a first-rate Flemish painter shortly after his return. The Erection of the Cross, for example, illustrates the artist's synthesis between Tintoretto's Crucifixion for the Scuola Grande of San Rocco in Venice and the dynamic characters of Michelangelo. This work is also considered one of the first examples of Baroque religious art.

At this point in his career, Rubens had prints and book covers made, especially by the Plantinian printing press of Balthasar Moretus the Younger, in order to spread his fame throughout Europe21. With the exception of a few remarkable etchings, he only made the drawings, leaving the creation of the prints to specialists, such as the Flemish engraver Lucas Vorsterman22. He called on a number of engravers trained by Hendrik Goltzius and he also designed the last method of wood engraving before this technique was renewed in the 19th century. Rubens also established copyright for his copies, notably in Holland where his work was then widely reproduced, but also in England, France and Spain23.
The Cycle of Marie de Medici and the diplomatic missions (1621-1630)
The Education of Marie de Medici painted from 1621 to 1625 for the Palais du Luxembourg, Paris.
Detailed article: Cycle of Marie de Medici.

After the death of Archduke Albert of Austria, Rubens continued to be the official court painter of Infanta Isabella of Austria from 1621 to 1633. In 1623, Rubens lost his daughter Serena who died when she was only 12 years old and three years later, in 1626, his wife, Isabella Brant died of the plague at the age of 34.

In 1621, the Queen of France Marie de Medici asked her to create two large allegorical cycles celebrating her life and that of her late husband, King Henry IV, to decorate the Galerie Médicis of the Palais du Luxembourg in Paris. Rubens completed the Cycle of Marie de Medici in 1625 which is currently exhibited at the Louvre Museum, but he could not complete that of Henri IV24. Marie de Medici was exiled from France in 1630 by her son, Louis XIII, and she died in 1642 in the same house in Cologne where Rubens had spent his childhood25.

At the same time, after the end of the Twelve Years' Truce in 1621, the Emperor and Archduke of Austria Ferdinand II of the House of Habsburg entrusted Rubens with a number of diplomatic missions26. For example, when Prince Ladislas IV Vasa arrived in Brussels on September 2, 1624 at the personal invitation of the Infanta Isabella of Austria, the French ambassador in Brussels wrote: “Rubens is there to paint the portrait of the prince of Poland, on the orders of the Infanta”27,28.
Adam and Eve (1628–29), painting that Rubens copied from a painting by Titian.

Between 1627 and 1630, Rubens' diplomatic career was particularly active. He traveled between the Courts of Spain and England, trying to bring peace between the Spanish Netherlands and the United Provinces.

In 1624, Rubens was ennobled as a "noble of the house of the Serene Infanta" by Philip IV of Spain and later, in 1630, knighted by King Charles I of England to reward him for his diplomatic efforts to bring about a peace treaty between Spain and England regarding the Spanish Netherlands and the United Provinces. In thanks, Rubens also received from Charles I his sword which had been given to him by the English parliament. This was preserved by his descendants, the van der Stegen de Schrieck family, who donated it to the King Baudouin Foundation. The sword is exhibited at the Grand Curtius29.

He also made several trips to the north of the Netherlands both for artistic and diplomatic reasons.

Rubens spent eight months in Madrid in 1628-1629. In addition to diplomatic negotiations, he produced several major works for Philippe IV as well as for private sponsors. He also undertook a renewed study of Titian's paintings, copying several of his canvases; including Adam and Eve (1628–29)30 During his stay in Spain, he became friends with the court painter Velazquez and the two planned to travel together to Italy. However, Rubens had to return to Antwerp and Velazquez made the trip without him31.

His stay in Antwerp was quite short and he quickly went to London where he remained until April 1630. One of the major works he produced during this period is the Allegory on the Blessings of Peace produced in 1629 and which is currently exhibited at the National Gallery in London32. This painting illustrates Rubens' immense interest in peace and he gave it to King Charles I as a present.

As Rubens's international reputation among collectors and foreign nobility continued to grow during this decade, the artist and his studio also continued to produce monumental paintings for local clients in Antwerp. The Assumption of the Virgin completed in 1626 for Antwerp Cathedral is a very good example.
End of life (1630-1640)
Deborah Kip and her children, 1630, National Gallery of Art, Washington, United States.

Rubens spent the last ten years of his life in Antwerp. On an artistic level, he obtained new commissions from the Habsburgs and he continued to work for foreign clients, for example painting the ceilings of the Banqueting House at the Palace of Whitehall, but he also explored other more personal artistic avenues, composing landscapes, such as the Rainbow Landscape (1635, Louvre Museum, Paris) and more intimate works as well as portraits of his wife, his children and the family des Moretus-Plantin (Plantin-Moretus museum)33.
Hélène Fourment or La Petite Pelisse, (Het Pelsken), c. 1638 Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

In 1630, four years after the death of his first wife, he married Hélène Fourment who was 16 at the time while Rubens was 53. From this second union, he had four children: Clara Johanna, François, Hélène and Pierre Paul (Hélène Fourment and two of her children)34 and (Hélène Fourment in the carriage)35. The family settled in 1635 in Château Het Steen located in Elewijt in what is now Belgium. Hélène Fourment was a source of inspiration for Rubens in her representation of voluptuous characters that we find in several of his paintings such as The Feast of Venus exhibited at the Museum of the History of Art in Vienna, or The Three Graces and The Judgment of Paris both at the Prado Museum in Madrid. Rubens also produced several paintings representing his wife such as Hélène Fourment in wedding dresses (Munich Pinacothek), Hélène Fourment coming out of the bath (or La Petite Pelisse - Vienne museum) but also Hélène Fourment and her children and Hélène Fourment in the carriage (both in the Louvre).

In 1636 he became official painter to the court of the Spanish Netherlands governed by Cardinal Ferdinand, Infante of Spain. It was during this same period that Rubens painted The Judgment of Paris, directly based on Raphael's Judgment of Paris, engraved by Raimondi. The only difference is that Rubens draws inspiration from the work seen in mirror.
The Feast of Venus (c. 1635), oil on canvas, 217 × 358 cm, Vienna Museum of Art History.

A year before, Charles I of England had entrusted him with the creation of the painted ceiling of the Banqueting House at the Palace of Whitehall designed by the architect Inigo Jones. But his most important commission was that of sixty canvases for the decoration of the hunting lodge of Philip IV of Spain, the Tower of the Parada, for which he was inspired by Ovid's work, the Metamorphoses.

Furthermore, when Marie de Medici experienced her final exile, it was Rubens who took her in and protected her until her death. She ended her life, two years after the painter's death, in his birthplace.

For his part, Rubens fell ill due to his chronic gout, his condition worsened and he finally died on May 30, 1640, leaving behind eight children, three with Isabella and five with Helena, his youngest child having been born three months before his death. He is buried in the Church of Saint-Jacques (Sint-Jacobskerk) in Antwerp36.
Posterity
Ixion king of the Laphites deceived by Juno whom he wanted to seduce, by Rubens, Louvre museum.

Rubens was not only a renowned artist but also a diplomat and a skillful merchant, making him a figure then known throughout Europe. His Antwerp workshop mobilizes very diverse talents, such as Frans Snyders for animal painting; his most important collaborators are Jacob Jordaens and Antoine van Dyck. His artistic fortune is immense, through a corpus of paintings and drawings: one of the painters who admired him the most, Delacroix nicknamed him the "Homer of painting", and Rubens embodies the primacy of color in the history of European art of the 17th century, continuing the lesson of the great Venetians and remaining one of the most important painters of Western art. The art historian Chennevières also created the terms Poussinists and Rubenists to evoke the quarrel between Rubenists (the colorists who favor the force of sensation) and Poussinists (the designers who favor form) which is part of the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns37.

During the auction of July 10, 2002 at Sotheby's, Rubens' painting The Massacre of the Innocents was sold for a price of 60.98 million euros (or 400 million F, 49.5 million £, 76.2 million USD) to Lord Thomson38.
Works
Descent from the Cross at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille.
Saint Dominic and Saint Francis preserving the world from the wrath of Christ at the Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon.
The Immaculate Conception work created between 1628 and 1629, at the Prado Museum.
Main article: List of works by Rubens.

Here is a list, far from exhaustive, which lists some of the painter's major works:

    The Transfiguration (1605), oil on canvas, 407 × 670 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy39.
    Study of a naked man for a Baptism of Christ (around 1604)40, black stone and stump, H. 0.324; L. 0.162 m, Beaux-Arts de Paris. Close-up drawing of the Baptism of Christ by Rubens kept at the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp. The Louvre Museum keeps a small cardboard box in black stone enhanced with white preparatory to the Antwerp painting, produced after the Beaux-Arts drawing41.
    Study for the Portrait of the Marquise Brigida Spinola Doria (around 1605)42, black chalk, brush, Indian ink and heightened with white on green paper, H. 0.345; L. 0.189 m, Beaux-Arts de Paris. Preparatory drawing for the Portrait of the Marchioness Brigida Spinola Doria (National Gallery of Washington)43.
    The Fall of Phaeton, circa 1604-1605, oil on canvas, 125.4 × 159.4 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington44,45.
    The Erection of the Cross (1609-1611), oil on wood, central panel 460 × 340 cm, side panels 460 × 150 cm, Notre-Dame Cathedral in Antwerp46.
    The Annunciation (c. 1610, completed c. 1627-1628), oil on canvas, 310 × 178.6 cm, Antwerp, Rubenshuis
    Sphinx head (circa 1615-1620)47.Black and white chalk on brown paper, 47.6 x 37.5 cm, France, Mougins Museum of Classical Art.
    The Disciples tt, 1611, oil, chapel of the Epernon family in the Saint-Eustache Church in Paris48, one of two known copies on this theme[ref. necessary]
    The Miracle of Saint-Just, around 1629 but before 1637, Bordeaux Museum of Fine Arts49.
    The Martyrdom of Saint George, circa 1615, Bordeaux Museum of Fine Arts50.
    Prometheus Tortured, 1611-1612, (with Frans Snyders), oil on canvas, 242.6 × 209.5 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art51.
    The Descent from the Cross (1612), triptych for the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Antwerp52.
    The Descent from the Cross (1612) for Notre-Dame de Saint-Omer Cathedral53.
    The Resurrection of Christ (1612), triptych intended for the chapel of the Plantin-Moretus family, Notre-Dame Cathedral in Antwerp54.
    Portrait of Jan Brueghel with his family, oil on wood, 124 × 95 cm, Courtauld Institute, London55
    The Holy Family, known as the Virgin and the Parrot (around 1614), oil on wood, 163 × 189 cm, at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp56.
    Portrait of the painter Frans Francken the Elder (1542-1616), 1615, oil on wood, 63.5 x 49.5 cm, Musée Fabre, Montpellier.
    Saint Francis receiving the stigmata (1615) at the Museum of Fine Arts in Arras57.
    Risen Christ, 1616, oil on canvas, Palatine Gallery, Pitti Palace, Florence.
    Christ placed in the tomb (around 1616), oil on canvas, 398 × 230 cm, Saint-Géry Church of Cambrai.
    Head of a Child (c. 1616) (probably Clara Serena, the artist's eldest daughter), oil on canvas mounted on wood, 33 × 26.3 cm, Vaduz, Liechtensteinische Staatliche Kunstsammlung.
    The Tiger Hunt (around 1616), oil on canvas, 253 cm × 319 cm, Rennes, Musée des Beaux-Arts58.
    Erichthonios discovered by the daughters of Cecrops (around 1616) 217.9 cm × 317 cm, Vienna, Liechtenstein Museum59.
    Old woman and young boy by candlelight (c. 1616-1617), oil on wood, 79 × 61 cm, The Hague, Mauritshuis60.
    Descent from the Cross (1616-1617), 425 × 295 cm, Lille, Palais des Beaux-Arts; painted for the Capuchin chapel in Lille, it is close to the version produced for the Antwerp cathedral61.
    Liberty of Women (around 1617).
    The Adoration of the Magi (around 1617-1618), oil on canvas, 251 cm × 328 cm, Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts62.
    The Miracles of Saint Ignatius of Loyola (around 1617-1618), oil on canvas, for the Jesuit church in Antwerp, today in Vienna, art history museum.
    Saint Dominic and Saint Francis preserving the world from the wrath of Christ (c. 1618-1620), oil on canvas, 565 cm × 365 cm, Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts.
    The Adoration of the Shepherds (1618), oil on canvas, 322 × 237 cm, for the former Cordeliers convent of Soissons, today at the Saint-Gervais-et-Saint-Protais cathedral of Soissons.
    The Adoration of the Shepherds (1619), oil on canvas, 340 × 248.5 cm, for the Capuchin convent of Aachen, preserved in Rouen, at the Museum of Fine Arts63.
    The Abduction of the Daughters of Leucippus (1620), Alte Pinakothek, Munich64.
    Perseus delivering Andromeda (1620), Gemäldegalerie, Berlin65.
    Allegory of Catholic Austria attacked by Protestant princes, circa 1620-1622, oil on wood, 74 x 91.5 cm, Fabre Museum, Montpellier.
    The Education of Marie de Medici (1620-1621), commissioned by Marie de Medici in 1620 for one of the two galleries of her Luxembourg Palace in Paris (Marie de Medici cycle), preserved in Paris at the Louvre Museum.
    Crowned Perseus (c. 1622), oil on canvas, 99.5 × 132 cm, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.
    Gemma Tiberiana – The Apotheosis of Germanicus, 1625-1626, oil on canvas, 100 × 82.6 cm, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, Oxford.
    The Assumption of the Virgin (1626), panel, 490 × 325 cm, Cathedral of Our Lady of Antwerp66.
    The Virgin and Child enthroned with the saints (c. 1627-1628), sketch for an altarpiece, oil on wood, 80.2 × 55.5 cm, Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie.
    The Immaculate Conception, circa 1628-1629, oil on canvas, 198 × 124 cm, Prado Museum, Madrid.
    Self-portrait, circa 1628-1630, oil on wood, 61.5 × 45 cm, Rubenshuis, Antwerp.
    Allegory on the Blessings of Peace (1629-1630), oil on canvas, 2