Early Rubens

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) was both a prodigious artist and one of the most extraordinary figures of the seventeenth century. Renowned for his virtuosic handling of oil paint, his taut depiction of dramatic action, and his sensuous coloring, Rubens was also an international diplomat, a shrewd businessman, a widely-read intellectual, a friend to scholars and monarchs, and the master of a prolific workshop. His early biographers regularly present Rubens as an aristocrat-artist, the favorite of Europe’s noble class, but this was far from an assured outcome. 

The Early Celebrity of Peter Paul Rubens focuses on what is arguably the artist’s most innovative period of production, from 1608 until about 1620. It was during these years that Rubens came to dominate Flemish painting through a series of social and artistic choices that laid the groundwork for his international fame and established a visual style that would guide ambitious painters for generations to come.

The Fine Arts Museums own one of Rubens’s most important paintings, The Tribute Money (1612), which is at the center of the show. The exhibition also features works on loan from many institutions around the world, including the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Because of the fragility of the material and the fact many of these paintings are cornerstone works at their respective museum, such loans are rare. Many of the works in the show have never before left Europe.

After closing at the Legion of Honor, the show will travel the Art Gallery of Ontario in October of 2019.

Image: Peter Paul Rubens  (1577–1640), Daniel in the Lions' Den, c.1614 – 1616. Oil on canvas, 7.35’ x: 10.8’, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC