Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1577-1640 Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 ?C May 30, 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. 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. Rubens was a prolific artist. His commissioned works were mostly religious subjects, "history" paintings, which included mythological subjects, and hunt scenes. He painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house. He also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the Joyous Entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635. His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not detailed; he also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. He was one of the last major artists to make consistent use of wooden panels as a support medium, even for very large works, but he used canvas as well, especially when the work needed to be sent a long distance. For altarpieces he sometimes painted on slate to reduce reflection problems. 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.  Related Paintings of Peter Paul Rubens :. | four great rivers of Antiquity | A Peasant Dance | Portrat der Maria de Medici, Konigin von Frankreich | Return from the Fields | Charles I in Garter Robes (mk01) |
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Abraham Bloemaert
(1566, Gorinchem - 27 January 1651, Utrecht), was a Dutch painter and printmaker in etching and engraving. He was one of the "Haarlem Mannerists" from about 1585, but in the new century altered his style to fit new Baroque trends. Bloemaert was the son of an architect, who moved his family to Utrecht in 1575, where Abraham was first a pupil of Gerrit Splinter (pupil of Frans Floris) and of Joos de Beer. He then spent three years in Paris, studying under several masters, and on his return to his native country received further training from Hieronymus Francken. In 1591 he went to Amsterdam, and four years later settled finally at Utrecht, where he became dean of the Guild of St. Luke. He excelled more as a colourist than as a draughtsman, was extremely productive, and painted and etched historical and allegorical pictures, landscapes, still-life, animal pictures and flower pieces. In the first decade of the seventeenth-century, Bloemaert began formulating his landscape paintings to include pictoresque ruined cottagges and other pastoral elements. In these works, the religious or mythological figures play a subordinate role. Country life was to remain Bloemaert's favourite subject, which he depicted with increasing naturalism. He drew motifs such as peasant cottages, dovecotes and trees from life and then on his return to the studio, worked them up into complex imaginary scenes. Among his pupils are his four sons, Hendrick, Frederick, Cornelis, and Adriaan (all of whom achieved considerable reputation as painters or engravers), the two Honthorsts, Ferdinand Bol and Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp.