Public Domain Image: Sündenfall (The Fall of Man, often referred to as ‘Adam and Eve’), oil on canvas painting (1570) by the Italian painter Titian, dimensions 240 cm x 186 cm, located at Museo del Prado located in Madrid, the capital of Spain.
Public Domain Image: Adam und Eva (Adam and Eve, alternatively referred to as The Fall of Man)oil on canvas painting (1628-29) by Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens, dimensions 237 cm x 184 cm (93.31 in x 72.44 in), located at Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain.
PD Image: Hélène Fourment in a fur wrap (also known as Het Pelsken, Das Pelzchen, and Porträt der Hélène Fourment), oil on wood painting (1638) by the Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), dimensions 176 cm x 83 cm, located at The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria.
Hélène Fourment, the woman in the above portrait, inspired the voluptuous figures in several paintings of Sir Peter Paul Rubens from the 1630s; paintings such as ‘The Feast of Venus’ (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), ‘The Three Graces’ (Prado, Madrid), and ‘The Judgment of Paris’ (Prado, Madrid) in which viewers recognized Hélène Fourment in the figure of Venus. In the portrait above she even partially modeled after the classical sculptures of the Venus Pudica, such as The Venus de' Medici or Medici Venus. The 16-year-old Hélène Fourment was Rubens’ wife whom the 53-year-old painter married in 1630, four years after the death of his first wife.
Full Resolution: 1256 × 2621 pixels, file size: 180 KB
Public Domain Photo: The Judgement of Paris (Urteil des Paris), oil on wood painting (1636) by the prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), dimensions 144.8 cm x 193.7 cm, located at The National Gallery in London.
Public Domain Image: Venus and Adonis, oil on canvas painting by Flemish Baroque painter Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), dimensions 194 cm x 236 cm, located at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image dimensions: 2536×2030 pixels, size: 582 KB
PD Image: The Three Graces (1620-1624), oil on panel painting by artist (s) of the workshop of the Dutch painter and sculptor, Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), dimensions 119 cm x 99 cm (46.85 in x 38.98 in)
PD Images: Susanna and the Elders (1607-08), oil on canvas painting by seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), dimensions 94 cm x 66 cm, located at Galleria Borghese, Rome. Rubens is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and his paintings on historical, biblical, mythological and allegorical subjects.
Here is a video clip that gives a short introduction to the Life and Works of Peter Paul Rubens.
Peter Paul Rubens brings together in one person singular artistic gifts, major humanistic knowledge, mastery of Latin and several modern languages and a knack for diplomacy, becoming an example for a handful of artists.
Rubens's family was originally from Antwerp. The serious political and religious living in the Netherlands in the 1560s lead the family into exile in 1568, moving first to Cologne and then to Siegen, where Peter Paul was born on 28 June 1577.
Soon Rubens began his career as a painter, with his master Tobias Verhaeght, a painter of landscapes. A year later moved to the studio of Adam van Noort, a ‘skilful painter of figures’ but that was for a very short time, and then he went to the studio of 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.
Due to his mother's illness in 1608, Rubens planned his departure from Italy for Antwerp, but she died before he returned. His return coincided with a period of renewed prosperity in the city with the signing of Treaty of Antwerp in April 1609, initiating the Twelve Years' Truce. In September 1609, Rubens was appointed court painter by Albert VII, Archduke of Austria and Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain, the governors of the Low Countries. He remained close to the Archduchess Isabella until her death in 1633. Rubens cemented his ties to the city when, on October 3, 1609, he married Isabella Brant, the daughter of a leading Antwerp citizen and humanist, Jan Brant.
PD Image: Hermit and sleeping Angelica (Einsiedler und schlafende Angelica) oil painting created by Dutch painter Peter Paul Rubens in 1626/1628, dimension 43 cm x 66 cm (frame dimensions: 61 x 83 x 7 cm) located at Museum of Art History, Gemäldegalerie, Vienna.
Image: The Three Graces (1635) oil on canvas painting by Peter Paul Rubens, dimensions 221 cm x 181 cm, last known location at Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain.
