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"Made in Belgium :: Art and Artists"
"Buy Fine Art Books Online"
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"Peter Paul Rubens , Belgian painter : Biography and Books"
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Rubens was born in Siegen, Westphalia to a successful Protestant lawyer who had fled Antwerp to escape religious persecution. In 1589, two years after his father's death, Rubens and his mother returned to Antwerp, where he had himself baptized a Catholic. Religion figured prominently in much of his later work. In Antwerp, his mother apprenticed Rubens to leading painters of the time like Adam Van Noort and Otto Venius.
In 1600 he went to Venice, Italy, where he worked as a court painter to the duke of Mantua, Vincenzo I of Gonzaga. He studied ancient Roman art and learned by copying the works of the Italian masters. His mature style was profoundly influenced by Titian.
In 1603 and 1604, he worked as a diplomat in Spain, combining art and diplomacy as he would throughout his career.
Upon the death of his mother in 1608, Rubens returned to Antwerp. A year later he married Isabella Brant, daughter of Jan Brant, a leading Antwerp humanist. He was appointed court painter by Albert and Isabella, the governors of the Low Countries.
He moved in 1610 to the Rubenshuis, a house in Antwerp that he designed for himself and which is now a museum. This house also contained his workshop where he and his apprentices made most of the paintings, his art collection, and his library, which was one of the most extensive of Antwerp. Rubens was a good friend and occasional collaborator of the family Moretus, owners of the large Plantin-Moretus publishing house.
His altarpieces The Raising of the Cross (1610) and The Descent of the Cross (1611–1614) for the Cathedral of Our Lady established Rubens as Flanders' leading painter.
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