Rubenesque describes a woman with a full, rounded, soft figure, after the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640). Today it works as a polite way to say full-figured or curvy. Merriam-Webster defines it first as relating to or resembling the painter or his works, and especially as full-figured with a pleasing roundness.
Rubens worked in Antwerp and painted for kings and queens, and his nudes gave English a word for a fuller body.
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When the word first appeared in English, it had nothing to do with weight.
And in Rubens's own century, a heavy body was not always a compliment. I don't believe he simply painted what his age found beautiful.
What You'll Discover
When it started to mean plump.
The material Rubens told painters to avoid.
Who the woman in the fur was.
What worried the king's brother.
What his century thought of heavy bodies.

