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 :. | The Village Wedding (mk05) | A 1615-1621 oil on canvas 'Wolf and Fox hunt' painting by Peter Paul Rubens | Faun and a young woman | cimone och efigenia | Landscape with a Bird-Catcher (mk05) |
Related Artists:
Gerard David
b.c. 1460, Oudewater, Neth. d.Aug. 13, 1523, Bruges Flemish Gerard David Locations Netherlandish painter. He is known as the last of the Flemish Primitives. Although born in the northern Netherlands, he moved to Bruges as a young man, and most of his work expresses the impassive, unmannered, microscopically realistic approach peculiar to south Netherlandish art in the time of Jan van Eyck. David was skilled at synthesizing the art of several important south Netherlandish predecessors, adapting, for instance, the compositions of van Eyck and the technique of Hugo van der Goes. He was also influenced by Hans Memling, whose example led him to refine and polish his cruder northern Netherlandish style and to adopt the popular theme of the Virgin and Child enthroned.
Guillaume Descamps
Guillaume-Desire-Joseph Descamps, a painter and engraver, was born at Lille in 1779. He was a pupil of Vincent, but, obtaining the "prix de Rome," he improved himself by travelling in Italy, and became court-painter of Murat in Naples. He died in Paris in 1858. The following paintings were executed by him: The Women of Sparta (in the Lille Museum). 1808. The Martyrdom of St. Andrew (in St. Andre, Lille). Murat on board the Ceres distributing Rewards (engraved hy himself). The Conversion of St. Augustine (in St. Eustache, Paris). The Apotheosis of Cardinal Tommasi (in San Martino di Monti, Rome). The Neapolitan Troops marching out against Capri.
Balthasar Anton Dunker
German, 1746-1807