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 :. | The Four Philosophers | Ildefonso altar | The robbery of the daughters of Leucippus | Drunken Silenus | The Martyrdom of St Livinus. |
Related Artists:
Rupert Bunny
Australian Painter, 1864-1947 Australian painter. After studying in Melbourne under G. F. Folingsby (d 1891), he moved to Europe in 1884 and studied in London under P. H. Calderon and in Paris under Jean-Paul Laurens, who introduced him to the Societe des Artistes Francais in 1887. His early works consisted mainly of mythological subjects and graceful images of pleasant Symbolist landscapes; he defected to the New Salon in 1901 and produced some less decorative works, including images of biblical subjects. A long series of paintings of women followed, but his style again changed abruptly when in 1913 he exhibited at the Salon d'Automne a series of images of dancers, The Rite, that shows the influence of Primitivism. Although not attracted to the avant-garde, Bunny showed an adventurous spirit in his unusual sense of colour, sense of rhythm and witty use of his subjects' poses. He continued to live in Paris and London until 1933.
Franz Horny
German, 1798-1824,German painter. He received his first instruction in art from his father, Conrad Horny (1764-1807), a painter and copperplate engraver, who taught at the Zeichenschule in Weimar. He attended this school from 1806 to 1816, training primarily as a painter of landscapes. In 1816, his patron Baron Carl Friedrich von Rumohr, a friend of his father, enabled him to travel to Italy. In Rome Horny became a student of Joseph Anton Koch, who introduced him to landscape composition in the classically heroic style. Through eager study, both from nature and from live models, Horny's skills developed swiftly, especially in his work in pen and watercolour (e.g. View of Olevano with Shepherds and a Hermit, 1817; Dresden, Kupferstichkab.). Horny was soon, however, drawn into the circle of the Lukasbr?der: Peter Joseph Cornelius persuaded him to participate in the major fresco project for the Casino Massimo in Rome. Horny completed a large number of pen and watercolour drawings (e.g. Weimar, Schlossmus.) depicting flowers, fruit and birds, and intended as wreaths and festoons to frame Cornelius's historical scenes from Dante's Paradiso. When Cornelius was recalled to Munich in 1818, however, this fresco was not carried out and Horny's designs were therefore not used. In the same year, Horny developed tuberculosis and moved to Olevano for his health. The rugged beauty of the Sabine Hills and their picturesque towns drew him back to the depiction of landscape. His drawings, combining Koch's classically heroic outlook with the poetic sensibility of the Lukasbr?der, often convey the impression of an earthly paradise, as in Italian Country Life (c. 1820; L?beck, St Annen-Mus.).
Pollaiuolo, Jacopo
Approx. 1441-1496 Painter, brother of Antonio Pollaiuolo. He was described as a painter in the membership records of the Compagnia di S Luca, which he joined in 1472. According to tradition, he initially trained under Andrea del Castagno. In his 1480 tax return Piero reported that he had a small house adjoining the family home '...which I use when I have painting to do'. He produced many paintings for the Florentine workshop,