Life and Works of Peter Paul Rubens

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.

French artist Jules Laurens

Image: La Baigneuse (1864 painting, aka The Bather) by Jules Laurens

Jules Auguste Joseph Laurens (1825-1901) is a French painter and lithographer, known for his Orientalist paintings, portraits of peasants and landscape. Born in a family of five children, at the age of twelve Jules joined his older brother, Jean Joseph Bonaventure Laurens, a French artist based in Montpellier.

From 1846 to 1849 he traveled as a draftsman to Eastern Europe, Greece, Turkey and Persia, as part of a scientific mission led by the geographer Xavier Hommaire de Hell. Despite the failure of the mission because of the death Hommaire Hell in Isfahan, Jules brought back hundreds of sketches (historical monuments and daily life of the inhabitants of these regions), drawings and watercolors that would serve his artistic activity.

From 1850-1880 he worked in Paris and regularly participated in the Salon and other exhibitions, and received orders for work, including that of Madame Hommaire de Hell, after she read the notes of her late husband.

In 1880 he published a biography of his brother, and reflected upon the art and related matters of the times, and wrote on the important people he met, such as Victor Hugo, Ingres, Gustave Dore, etc.

He contributed greatly to the development of the Bibliothèque Inguimbertine and Museums of Carpentras. As an avid collector, he donated to the institution many notable works of contemporary artists such as Victor Hugo, Ingres, Auguste Bonheur, Eugene Ciceri, Gustave Dore, etc.

Self Portrait, the Allegory of Painting by Artemisia Gentileschi

Self-portrait (1630s) as the Allegory of Painting by Artemisia Gentileschi, oil on canvas, 96.5 cm x 73.7 cm, Royal Collection, Windsor.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, self-portrait

Image: Jean-Léon Gérôme, self-portrait (1886), oil on canvas, dimensions 40.6 cm x 30.5 cm, currently located at Aberdeen Art Gallery, Aberdeen, Scotland.

Jean-Léon Gérôme (May 11, 1824 to January 10, 1904) was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as Academicism. The range of his oeuvre included historical painting, Greek mythology, Orientalism, portraits and other subjects, bringing the Academic painting tradition to an artistic climax.

Venus Dormida: Sleeping Venus by Giorgione

Painting: Venus Dormida or Sleeping Venus (1501) by Giorgione, oil on canvas, dimensions 108.5 cm x 175 cm, current located at Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, Germany.

Giorgione (born Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco; 1477/8-1510) was an Italian painter of the High Renaissance in Venice. Giorgione is known for the elusive poetic quality of his work, though only about six surviving paintings are acknowledged for certain to be his work. The resulting uncertainty about the identity and meaning of his art has made Giorgione one of the most mysterious figures in European painting.

Mona Lisa: Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo

Mona Lisa (La Gioconda or La Joconde), a sixteen-century portrait painted in oil on a poplar panel in Florence, Italy by Leonardo da Vinci, is owned by the Government of France and is on display at the Louvre museum in Paris under the title Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo.

Described by art-lovers as the most famous and iconic painting in the world, Mona Lisa was in obscurity until the mid-nineteenth century when artists of the Symbolist movement began to appreciate it and associated it with ideas of feminine mystique. Walter Pater, in his 1867 essay expressed this view by describing ‘the figure in the painting as a kind of mythic embodiment of eternal femininity’, who is ‘older than the rocks among which she sits’ and who ‘has been dead many times and learned the secrets of the grave.’

Leonardo Da Vinci began painting Mona Lisa in 1503, lingered over it four years and left it unfinished. He continued to work on it for three years after he moved to France and finished it shortly before he died in 1519. He took the painting from Italy to France in 1516 when King François I invited him to work at the Clos Lucé near the king's castle in Amboise. Then, most likely, through the heirs of Leonardo's assistant Salai, the king bought the painting for 4,000 écus and kept it at Château Fontainebleau, where it remained until given to Louis XIV, who moved the painting to the Palace of Versailles. After the French Revolution, it was moved to the Louvre. Napoleon I had it moved to his bedroom in the Tuileries Palace and returned it later to the Louvre. During the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) it was moved from the Louvre to a hiding place elsewhere in France.

Casa Leonardo, the house where Leonardo da Vinci grew up

Photo: Casa Leonardo, the house where Leonardo da Vinci is believed to have grown up. It is situated alongside Via di Anchiano, 3km north of Vinci, Tuscany, Italy.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), the Italian painter, sculptor, architect, cartographer, anatomist, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, geologist, botanist and writer, was born on April 15, 1452, in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci in Florence. He was the illegitimate son of Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine legal notary, and Caterina, a peasant woman. It is believed Leonardo spent his first five years in the hamlet of Anchiano in the home of his mother, which is shown in the above photo.

Primavera, painting by Sandro Botticelli

Photo: Primavera (1482), icon of the springtime renewal of the Florentine Renaissance, also at the summer palazzo of Pierfrancesco de' Medici, as a companion piece to The Birth of Venus and Pallas and the Centaur. Seen from left to right are Mercury, the Three Graces, Venus, Flora, Chloris and Zephyrus.

The masterpieces of Sandro Botticelli, Primavera (1482) and The Birth of Venus (1485) were seen at the villa of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici at Castello in the mid-16th century, and until recently, it was assumed that both works were painted specifically for the villa. But recent studies suggest the Primavera was painted for Lorenzo's townhouse in Florence, and The Birth of Venus was commissioned by someone else for a different site. The influence of Gothic realism is tempered by Botticelli's study of the antique. But the subjects themselves remain fascinating for their ambiguity. The complex meanings of these paintings continue to receive widespread scholarly attention.

Pallas and the Centaur: painting by Botticelli

Photo: Pallas and the Centaur, a painting by Botticelli

Pallas et le Centaure (Pallas and the Centaur, 1482), a painting by the Italian Renaissance period painter Sandro Botticelli, is preserved in the Uffizi of Florence, Italy. The painting's bare landscape focuses one's gaze on two figures. First, a centaur has trespassed on the forbidden territory. This lusty being, half horse and half man, is being brought under control by a guard-nymph armed with a shield and halberd, and she has grabbed him by the hair. The woman has been identified both as the goddess Pallas Athena and the Amazon Camilla, chaste heroine of Virgil's Aeneid. The two aspects of the human soul, reason and instinct fighting one another, are represented by the double nature of the centaur. The latter, whose classical epithet is Chiron, was perhaps inspired by a classic relief, though the pathetic expression is wholly by Botticelli.

The Birth of Venus by Botticelli

The Birth of Venus, a painting of AD 1486 by Sandro Botticelli, depicts the goddess Venus, having emerged from the sea as a full grown woman, arriving at the seashore. The painting, tempera on canvas (dimensions: 172.5 cm × 278.5 cm / 67.9 in × 109.6 in), is held in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
Venus is a Roman goddess associated with love, beauty and fertility. Venus played a key role in Roman religious festivals and mythology. From third century BC, the Hellenization of Roman upper classes identified her as the equivalent of the Greek goddess Aphrodite.
The Birth of Venus, now among the most familiar masterpieces of Florentine art, is the work of Sandro Botticelli (c 1445 - May 17, 1510), an Italian painter of the Florentine school during the Early Renaissance period.