Brief introduction: Rubens, born in Siegen, Westphalia, to Jan Rubens and Maria Pypelincks in 1577, died in 1640, was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter. He worked as a page boy in a Countess’ home in his early age, and was very fluent in German, Latin, and Flemish. Later he learned painting from several artists and became a painter in 1598. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In 1600, Rubens came to Italy, received the appointment as a painter in Gonzaga at the court. Later in 1603, he travelled to Spain on a diplomatic mission where he studied the extensive collections of Raphael and Titian that had been collected by Philip II. During this period, his works included "Equestrian Portrait of the Duke of Lerma" (1603, Museo del Prado, Madrid), " St Helena with the True Cruss (1604 – 1602)", "The Entombment of Christ (1602–1603) " and so on. Influenced by the Renaissance art, his works had the characteristics of Venetian painting school. He returned to Italy in 1604, where he remained for the next four years, first in Mantua and then in Genoa and Rome. When stayed in Genoa, Rubens painted a number of portraits, including “Marchesa Brigida Spinola-Doria (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)”. Upon hearing of his mother's illness in 1608, Rubens planned his departure from Italy for Antwerp. The following year Regent was appointed as court painter by Albert VII, Archduke of Austria and Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain, the governors of the Low Countries, and painted numerous of paintings of religious and mythological subjects, such as "The Resurrection of Christ," "Love's Paradise," “The Last Judgment (1617)”. His brushwork was free and easy; emphasized the figures in their entirety, all these showed his enter to the peak of his painting career. The feature of his painting was to combine the superb skills of Renaissance art and humanism and Flanders ancient tradition of national art, expressed his praise of the joy and passionate for life, formed a magnificent, colorful, sporty and strong style, became a representative of Baroque art. From 1630 to 1640, as had entered the old age, he suffered much from rheumatism and his fingers become deformed, but he still insisted on painting. A number of outstanding landscapes and portraits were finished in his later years. With vivid color, bold brushwork, although most of the paintings were completed under the assistant of his students, from the oil painting sketches painted by himself, we can still find his paintings had entered a new stage of development. Rubens painting had greatly influenced the development of painting in Flanders even the whole Western. His fondness of painting full-figured women gave rise to the terms 'Rubensian' or 'Rubenesque' for plus-sized women. The term 'Rubensiaans' is also commonly used in Dutch to denote such women. Many artists during 18 and 19th century had been influenced by Rubens in some extent, such as the French artist Eugène Delacroix, the British artist P. A. Renoir and J. Reynolds, J. Constable. Rubens’ Artistic Style: Rubens is one of the heavyweight figures of European art field in the early 17th century. His is a proponent of an extravagant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp which produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, King of Spain, and Charles I, King of England. His rich experience of life fully demonstrated in his variety of creations. Rubens received artistic training in Antwerp since his childhood, later traveled for study in Italy and influenced by Mannerism. His artistic style was an integration of the fine and realistic realism of Flanders and the bold and free Southern Renaissance, perfectly expressed the human spirit of compatible with Christianity and Greek and Roman culture. In the development history of Western art, Rubens had a key position and inspired the creation of the later Romantic master Delacroix’s artistic orientation. Rubens put high emphasis on color changes under light, indirectly affected the development of Impressionism. In his field, very few can compare with Renoir’s exquisite painting techniques in women nudes.
