Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1577-1640 Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 ?C May 30, 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp which produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, king of Spain, and Charles I, king of England. Rubens was a prolific artist. His commissioned works were mostly religious subjects, "history" paintings, which included mythological subjects, and hunt scenes. He painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house. He also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the Joyous Entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635. His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not detailed; he also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. He was one of the last major artists to make consistent use of wooden panels as a support medium, even for very large works, but he used canvas as well, especially when the work needed to be sent a long distance. For altarpieces he sometimes painted on slate to reduce reflection problems. His fondness of painting full-figured women gave rise to the terms 'Rubensian' or 'Rubenesque' for plus-sized women. The term 'Rubensiaans' is also commonly used in Dutch to denote such women.  Related Paintings of Peter Paul Rubens :. | Landscape with a Rainbow | The Lamentation | Sitting old man | Philipp IV from Spain to horse | Orpheus and Eurydice |
Related Artists:
BREENBERGH, Bartholomeus
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1598-1657 Dutch painter, draughtsman and etcher. He was one of at least eight children of a wealthy Protestant family in Deventer, where his father was the town pharmacist. After his father's death in 1607, the family left Deventer, probably moving to Hoorn. No artist then living in Hoorn could plausibly have been Breenbergh's teacher, and given the fact that his earliest works reveal the stylistic influence of the Pre-Rembrandtists, it is more probable that he was apprenticed in Amsterdam. In 1619 he was called upon to give testimony in Amsterdam: on this occasion his profession was listed as 'painter'. His oeuvre can be divided stylistically and iconographically into two distinct groups. He belonged to the first generation of DUTCH ITALIANATES, northern artists who travelled to Italy in the 1620s and were inspired by the light and poetry of the southern landscape. The work of this period consists of numerous Italianate landscape drawings and paintings.
Jacopo Pontormo
Italian 1494-1557 Jacopo Pontormo Galleries Italian painter and draughtsman. He was the leading painter in mid-16th-century Florence and one of the most original and extraordinary of Mannerist artists. His eccentric personality, solitary and slow working habits and capricious attitude towards his patrons are described by Vasari; his own diary, which covers the years 1554-6, further reveals a character with neurotic and secretive aspects. Pontormo enjoyed the protection of the Medici family throughout his career but, unlike Agnolo Bronzino and Giorgio Vasari, did not become court painter. His subjective portrait style did not lend itself to the state portrait. He produced few mythological works and after 1540 devoted himself almost exclusively to religious subjects. His drawings, mainly figure studies in red and black chalk, are among the highest expressions of the great Florentine tradition of draughtsmanship; close to 400 survive, forming arguably the most important body of drawings by a Mannerist painter. His highly personal style was much influenced by Michelangelo, though he also drew on northern art, primarily the prints of Albrecht Derer.
COUSTENS, Pieter
Flemish painter (active 1453-1487 in Bruges and Brussels)