Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish painter, born in 1577 and dead in 1640, the leading master of Baroque painting in the Spanish Netherlands. He ran the biggest studio of his age, painted a whole cycle for the mother of the king of France, and gave his name to the word Rubenesque. He was also a diplomat: in 1629 the king of Spain sent him to London to help end a war, and the king of England knighted him.
The word Rubenesque describes a body. The man behind it also carried messages between kings.
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The picture people think of first is The Three Graces, painted in 1635, when Rubens was in his late fifties. On the left stands his young second wife, Helena Fourment. Experts believe he painted it for himself rather than for a client, and he kept it. When he died, his possessions were auctioned, and Philip IV of Spain bought it.
It nearly did not last. About 150 years later, King Charles III of Spain declared it indecent and ordered it burned. It survived only because it was stored with other nudes at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid.
Yet the kings who sought Rubens out wanted something else from him. In 1629 Spain and England had been at war for five years, and Philip IV sent his painter to London to prepare the ground for peace. Rubens came home in March 1630 knighted by Charles I of England, and the treaty was signed that November.
What You'll Discover
Why he was born in Germany.
Who really painted his canvases.
What a queen asked him to paint.
Why a king sent him to London.
Why he married a sixteen-year-old.