Why was rubens considered to be a court painter

He painted his Peace and War and presented this allegorical work to Charles I. Charles also commissioned him to work on a series of nine ceiling paintings for the Banqueting House in London. Further recognition of the artist's skills came when he was made an honorary Master of Arts by Cambridge University. The artist returned to Antwerp from London in April and on 6th December married Helene Fourment the daughter of a rich tapestry dealer Daniel Fourment. Helene was sixteen years old when she married the fifty-three-year-old artist, she inspired many of the artist's later works acting as a model for many of them.

Ruben's portrait of her in a fur wrap is a particularly famous example of the artist's intimate obsession with his new wife. In the city council of Antwerp commissioned the artist for a series of sketches of triumphal arches.

These were designed for the ceremonial reception of the new Governor, the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand. Rubens was made Court Painter to Ferdinand and received a commission for paintings based on Ovid's Metamorphoses.

He was to spend many summer months at the Chateau where he painted his final landscapes in and around the locality. Rubens, who was suffering from gout, wrote his will on 27th of May, he died on 30th May at the age of The cosmopolitan artist had assimila ted the many lessons learned from the Italian Renaissance and created his own artistic legacy.

Along with his Italian contemporary Caravaggio, he epitomised the Baroque style that was prevalent immediately following the Renaissance period. This work was only attributed to Rubens in It was thought to be by one of his assistants until an expert in Flemish art George Gordon recognised the painting as the work of the master himself.

It is a very dramatic and quite graphic account of the Biblical story in which King Herod orders the slaughter of every new-born male child in the village of Bethlehem.

His motive was to avoid the loss of his kingdom to the King of the Jews whose birth had been announced in a prophecy. Following the death of his wife, Isabella, in , Rubens traveled for several years, combining his artistic career with diplomatic visits to Spain and England on behalf of the Netherlands. When he returned to Antwerp, he married his second wife, Helena Fourment; his family group "Self-Portrait with Helena and Peter Paul" was a testament to his domestic happiness with his wife and new son.

In the s, Rubens produced several of his major mythological works, including "The Judgment of Paris" and "The Garden of Love," an idyllic scene of courting couples in a landscape. At the time of his death, on May 30, , in Antwerp, Spanish Netherlands now Belgium , Rubens was one of the most celebrated artists in Europe. He left behind eight children as well as numerous studio assistants, some of whom—most notably Anthony van Dyck—went on to have successful artistic careers of their own.

Rubens's skill at arranging complex groupings of figures in a composition, his ability to work on a large scale, his ease at depicting diverse subjects and his personal eloquence and charm all contributed to his success. His style combined Renaissance idealization of the human form with lush brushwork, dynamic poses and a lively sense of realism. His fondness for depicting fleshy, curvaceous female bodies, in particular, has made the word "Rubenesque" a familiar term.

We strive for accuracy and fairness. From to , he was largely in Rome. During this period Rubens received his most important commission to date for the high altar of the city's most fashionable new church, Santa Maria in Vallicella or, Chiesa Nuova. The subject was to be St. Gregory the Great and important local saints adoring an icon of the Virgin and Child. The first version, a single canvas Musee des Beaux-Arts, Grenoble , was immediately replaced by a second version on three slate panels that permits the actual miraculous holy image of the "Santa Maria in Vallicella" to be revealed on important feast days by a removable copper cover, also painted by the artist.

The impact of Italy on Rubens was great. Besides the artistic influences, he continued to write many of his letters and correspondences in Italian for the rest of his life, signed his name as "Pietro Paolo Rubens", and spoke longingly of returning to the peninsula-a hope that never materialized. Upon hearing of his mother's illness in , Rubens planned his departure from Italy for Antwerp. However, she died before he made it home. His return coincided with a period of renewed prosperity in the city with the signing of Treaty of Antwerp in April , which initiated the Twelve Years' Truce.

In September of that year Rubens was appointed court painter by Albert and Isabella, the governors of the Low Countries. He received special permission to base his studio in Antwerp, instead of at their court in Brussels, and to also work for other clients.

He remained close to the Archduchess Isabella until her death in , and was called upon not only as a painter but also as an ambassador and diplomat. Rubens further cemented his ties to the city when, on October 3, , he married Isabella Brant, the daughter of a leading Antwerp citizen and humanist Jan Brant.

In , Rubens moved into a new house and studio that he designed. Now the Rubenshuis museum, the Italian-influenced villa in the center of Antwerp contained his workshop, where he and his apprentices made most of the paintings, and his personal art collection and library, both among the most extensive in Antwerp.

During this time he built up a studio with numerous students and assistants. His most famous pupil was the young Anthony van Dyck, who soon became the leading Flemish portraitist and collaborated frequently with Rubens. He also frequently collaborated with the many specialists active in the city, including the animal painter Frans Snyders, who contributed to the eagle to Prometheus Bound and his good friend the flower-painter Jan Brueghel the Elder.

Altarpieces such as The Raising of the Cross and The Descent from the Cross for the Cathedral of Our Lady were particularly important in establishing Rubens as Flanders' leading painter shortly after his return. The Raising of the Cross, for example, demonstrates the artist's synthesis of Tintoretto's Crucifixion for the Scuola di San Rocco in Venice, Michelangelo's dynamic figures, and Rubens's own personal style.

This painting has been held as a prime example of Baroque religious art. Rubens used the production of prints and book title-pages, especially for his friend Balthasar Moretus-owner of the large Plantin-Moretus publishing house to further extend his fame throughout Europe during this part of his career. With the exception of a couple of brilliant etchings, he only produced drawings for these himself, leaving the printmaking to specialists, such as Lucas Vorsterman.

He recruited a number of engravers trained by Goltzius, who he carefully schooled in the more vigorous style he wanted. First name. Sign up to the Art UK newsletter. Did you know? Rubens produced so much that the first complete catalogue of his work — the Corpus Rubenianum — began publication in and is still incomplete, with volume 26 published in Anthony van Dyck was one of Rubens' many studio assistants Rubens was knighted by Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland, and by Philip IV of Spain.

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