What do Roman gods like Venus and Hercules have to do with the baroque painter Rubens? Quite a lot, actually!
Peter Paul Rubens is mostly known for his bold and expressive paintings. He created large, dramatic scenes with bright colors and a strong sense of movement. But did you know he channeled his inspiration from antiquity?
In fact, he was so deeply fascinated with the art and literature of ancient Greece and Rome that many of his subjects were taken from ancient sculptures.
A new exhibition at the Getty Villa Museum further explores this topic and presents Rubens’s works alongside the antiquities that inspired them.
Rubens is a fascinating artist so we dug deeper and asked paintings curators Anne Woollett and Davide Gasparotto, and antiquities curator Jeffrey Spier to answer 10 questions about him.
1. Who is Peter Paul Rubens?
Peter Paul Rubens, who lived from 1577–1640, was a multi-talented and learned Flemish painter and draftsman who worked in Antwerp, in the Southern Netherlands—a Catholic region that roughly corresponds to Belgium today.
His contemporaries appreciated his ability to write in Italian and Latin, to multi-task while painting, his unparalleled productivity, and the sumptuous house he built, which reflected his sophistication and taste. The Kings of England and Spain knighted him for his diplomatic efforts to secure peace between them.
2. How can you spot a Rubens painting?
A Rubens painting has a bold visual impact achieved through expressive brushwork (smoother earlier in his career and freer in his last years), brilliant color, expressive bodies, and strong narration.
3. What is your favorite fun fact about Rubens that most people are surprised about?
According to his nephew, Rubens adhered to a rigorous schedule that included rising early for mass and eating judiciously. But at the end of the day, he relaxed by riding his horse around the perimeter of the city of Antwerp.
4. What’s one question you would ask Rubens if you had the chance?
How do you do it all?
5. How does an artist from the Netherlands find inspiration from antiquities?
Ancient Roman statues were amongst the most celebrated discoveries in the Renaissance. They were considered by artists in Italy and the Netherlands to be great artistic achievements and ideal forms of the human body. Rubens studied them via secondary sources like prints and small bronzes and perhaps casts from a young age before he finally traveled to Italy to see them for himself.
6. Did he have a favorite ancient work or medium? If so, what was it and why?
It is hard to say if he had a favorite. However, he drew the impressive muscled Belvedere Torso several times and used it as the basis for strong and dynamic male physiques in many works throughout his career.
In terms of medium, he had a particular affinity for carved gems, each of which was unique.
The Meleager sarcophagus with Rubens’s Calydonian Boar Hunt: this is the first time they have ever been brought together (Rubens saw the sarcophagus and painted the painting a few years later).
Silenus with a Wineskin and Rubens/Van Dyck’s Drunken Silenus Supported by Satyrs. Rubens transforms the brooding Silenus in the marble with his distinctive hairy, paunchy body into the center of a rowdy, carousing narrative full of movement that characterizes and celebrates a fictional arcadian life.
8. Would you rather live in Rubens's time or in antiquity?
Gasparotto: Neither.
Woollett: I wouldn’t mind a day trip to both.
Spier: Leiden University in Rubens's time would have been pleasant, although there was a lot of fighting going on in those years. Rome in the first century AD would be nice, as long as you were an aristocrat.
9. If one of Rubens's artworks could talk, which one would you listen to? Why?
Rubens’s friend Jan Gaspar Gevaerts (known as Gevartius) seems about to speak to us, the viewer, in his portrait. What friendly greeting or intriguing remark might he be about to make?
Like Rubens, Gevartius was extremely knowledgeable about antiquity, so much so that Rubens trusted him with his son Albert's education while he was away. As city secretary, Gevartius was responsible for organizing major public events and ceremonies. He and Rubens worked together to devise the program from the lavish triumphal entry of the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand to Antwerp in 1635.
In Rubens's portrait, Gevartius seems to be turning to look up from his page (perhaps an allusion to the treatise on Marcus Aurelius he was working on but never published) with alert expectation, possibly suggesting that Gevartius was a lively conversationalist. Gevartius knew many of the most important scholars in Europe and was a dynamic correspondent.
10. Was J. Paul Getty familiar with Rubens's works and did he collect any?
Getty, who received a classical education and was a very informed collector of antiquities, was passionate about Rubens. In his books and diaries, Getty enthuses about the exhilarating scale and drama of Rubens’s paintings. He even visited Antwerp to see the monumental Rubens altarpieces in the Cathedral and to visit his house (now a museum).
Getty preferred Rubens’s mythological subjects, mostly involving female nudes, and he acquired paintings that appealed to his sensibilities, such as Diana and her Nymphs on the Hunt (which has been cleaned for the exhibition) and the Death of Dido for his new museum. Both of these paintings, as well as Andromeda, are considered the work of Rubens’s workshop today. But at the time, Getty felt strongly he had acquired the best and first versions of these subjects.
