Peter Paul Rubens

Peter Paul Rubens is viewed in our time as one of the Masters of his period in art. Living in the 1600’s he was vastly influenced by the Baroque ideals of art and culture. He is considered by some to have blended the work from the Renaissance and Early Baroque into one of the first truly "European" styles of painting. His style is considered to be an exaggerated Baroque style with large amounts of emphasis on color, sensuality, and movement. Subjects in Rubens' paintings are commonly shown in dynamic postures with facial expressions full of emotion and expressive movement. Rubens was born in Siegen, Westphalia on the 28th of June in 1577. He was the sixth child of his parents Jan Rubens, his father, and Maria Pypelincks, his mother. This came after quite the political scandal his family had just begun to move on from. Previous to Peter’s birth, Jan Rubens had been imprisoned for an affair with Anna of Saxony, the second wife of William of Orange. When Peter was one year old, his family moved back to Cologne from where they had fled before his birth. They had been forced to leave during the rule of the Spanish Netherlands by the Duke of Alba due to the persecution of Calvinist’s at the time.
Peter’s father was a lawyer, and noticing Peter’s intelligence saw to it that he received a Classical education. After the death of Jan Ruben’s, Maria took her family back to a small property she owned in Antwerp in 1567. When Rubens was 13, his family’s last wealth was used to provide his oldest sister a marriage dowry, and he was sent to be a page under the care of Countess Lalaing. It is thought this is where he received his education in formal manners and conduct. However, after a few months had passed, under Peter’s instigation, he got his mother to apprentice him to a painter.
The painter he was apprenticed to was named Tobias Verhaeght. This is essentially where Peter Paul Rubens art career began. Later he studied under two of Antwerp's most prominent painters at