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Sir Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577-1640)

A man and woman greet each other at the center of a group of about a dozen people set within a landscape in this horizontal painting. All the people have pale, peachy skin. In the middle of the crowd, a woman, Abigail, kneels to our left while a man to our right, David, reaches out to her. Abigail’s blond hair is tied back under a white veil that drapes over her shoulders, and she wears a slate-blue dress and a string of pearls around her neck. She holds her left hand, on our right, to her chest and her other hand gestures down to a basket of bread held by a man in the lower left corner of the painting. David stands and bends toward Abigail as he cups her bent elbow with his left hand. His other hand rests on a walking stick near her head, and his index finger is extended as if to brush her cheek. He has short, curly blond hair and beard, and he wears a thigh-length tunic under a breastplate. Crimson-red fabric drapes around his shoulders and over his armor, and a dagger or short sword hangs at his hip. Three women, three men, and a donkey gather to our left, behind Abigail. Two of the men hold large baskets of bread, and they all look toward Abigail and David. Six armored men, two younger people, and two horses make up the group to the right. Trees line a hill behind the people to our left and dark gray and amber-colored clouds fill the sky.

Overview

The most sought-after painter in northern Europe during the seventeenth century, Peter Paul Rubens, was also a diplomat, linguist, and scholar. His dynamic, emotional style with its rich texture, vivid color, and lively movement has influenced Western art to the present day.

Born the son of a lawyer and educated at a Jesuit school in Antwerp, Flanders, Rubens learned classical and modern languages. He spent the years 1600 to 1608 studying and working in Italy. Returning to Antwerp, he continued to travel as both courtier and painter. His repeated visits to Madrid, Paris, and London allowed him to negotiate treaties while accepting royal commissions for art.

One of Rubens' major innovations in procedure, which many later artists have followed, was his use of small oil studies as compositional sketches for his large pictures and tapestry designs. Rather than merely drawing, Rubens painted his modelli, or models, thereby establishing the color and lighting schemes and the distributions of shapes simultaneously.

Sir Peter Paul Rubens, The Meeting of David and Abigail, c. 1630, oil on panel, Bequest of Lore Heinemann in memory of her husband, Dr. Rudolf J. Heinemann, 1997.57.8

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Shown from the about the thighs up, a man, a woman holding a swaddled baby, and a satyr, which has a man’s torso and goat’s legs, sit and stand around a table in a deeply shadowed room, filling this horizontal painting. All the people have light skin and dark hair, and are lit dramatically from our left. To our left, the bare-chested satyr faces our right in profile as he leans toward the table, looking up at the woman. He wears a crown of leaves and has a dark goatee. Almost lost in shadow, a sable-brown horn juts up from his temple. Light falls across his bare shoulders, and his hands and neck are ruddy. Another ring of leaves encircles his waist over the silvery-gray fur of his goat’s legs. He holds his left hand, farther from us, in front of his chest with his open palm facing the couple to our right. His other hand rests at the top of a wooden staff behind his right hip, closer to us. The staff disappears behind a wood plank resting across at least one barrel, which presumably acts as the bench on which he sits on or hovers slightly over. The second man sits at the table to our right, his back mostly to us as he looks over his left shoulder, up toward the satyr, with his face in profile. One brow is cocked over the dark eye we can see, and he has a prominent nose and a mustache. He wears a loose-fitting, long-sleeved, white garment tied around the waist. He blows across a soup spoon held to his lips, his cheeks puffed. He leans on his other arm, which rests on the tabletop near a blue bowl. Across the table, behind the seated man, a woman looks back at the satyr from the corners of her eyes, her coral-red lips curled up in a smile. Her body faces our left and she tilts her head to her left, our right, as she turns her face down toward that shoulder. Her dark brown hair is pulled up and back, and she wears an olive-green wrap over a white shirt. The baby she holds leans away from her chest to twist and look back at the satyr as well. A few details eventually emerge from the deeply shadowed background, including a fourth person tucked into the lower left corner, who looks back over a shoulder at us or the group. Light rims the corner of a window cut from a stone wall, and a few ceramic dishes and cups line two shelves to our right behind the woman.

Rubens and the Baroque Style

The dramatic artistic style of the seventeenth century is now called "baroque," a term apparently derived at a later time from ornate jewelry set with irregular pearls. At its most exuberant, the baroque involves restless motion, startling color contrasts, and vivid clashes of light and shadow. Baroque art often appeals directly to the emotions, exemplified by three of the life-size beasts in Rubens' Daniel in the Lions' Den that stare hungrily at the viewer.

Rubens managed a very large studio in Antwerp, training many apprentices and employing independent colleagues to help execute specific projects. Among his mature collaborators whose baroque works are on view in the National Gallery of Art are Anthony van Dyck, Jacob Jordaens, Jan Brueghel, and Frans Snyders.

Rubens' style tremendously influenced baroque painters throughout Europe, even those such as the German-born Johann Liss who had no documented contact with the master. Liss' The Satyr and the Peasant, for instance, is Rubensian in its lively gestures and telling expressions. Painted during the 1620s in Italy, it illustrates a tale from Aesop's Fables in which an immortal satyr helped a peasant find his way through a winter storm. The goat-legged creature was astonished when the man put his chilled hands to his mouth to warm them. In thanks for the satyr's guidance, the peasant invited him home to eat. The satyr was further perplexed when the man blew on his spoon to cool the hot soup. The satyr jumped up in disgust at human hypocrisy, proclaiming, "I will have nothing to do with someone who blows hot and cold with the same breath!"

Johann Liss, German, c. 1597 - 1631, The Satyr and the Peasant, possibly c. 1623/1626, oil on canvas, Widener Collection, 1942.9.39

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From high above the earth, we look onto a dramatically lit scene with a man falling from a horse-drawn chariot in midair, surrounded by eleven women against a bank of clouds in this horizontal painting. All of the people have pale skin and are illuminated by a bright burst of sunlight streaming across the scene from the upper right corner. The man is covered only by a burgundy-red sash that wraps across his groin and around one shoulder. He careens headfirst from the U-shaped, golden chariot with his chest facing us, arms flung overhead and legs splayed, to our right of center. The tumble of bodies around him includes four horses, three ivory white and one gray, and the eleven women, who are either nude or dressed in robes of parchment white, tan, slate blue, butterscotch yellow, steel gray, or rose pink. The women all have blond or brown hair, and some have wings like butterflies, patterned with circles and stripes. They fall alongside the man or float above the wreckage, their robes and hair billowing. Some of the women hold the red reins of the horses, though some of the reins stop abruptly or are painted over so they appear as dark lines beneath the surface. The nickel-gray clouds surround and support some of the women in front of a hazy circular arch curving up the left side of the composition. Peeks of sky around the action are deep aqua blue, and vibrant orange flames lick up from the earth in the lower right.

Phaeton, Apollo’s son, begged his father to allow him to drive the chariot of the sun across the sky. In the hands of the rash youth, who had neither the strength nor the experience to control the chariot, the horses bolted, scorching everything in their path with the sun's heat. The butterfly–winged female figures, personifying the seasons and hours, react in terror as the earth below bursts into flame. Even the great astrological bands that arch through the heavens are disrupted. To save the universe from destruction, Zeus, king of the gods, throws a thunderbolt, represented here by a blinding shaft of light. As the chariot disintegrates, Phaeton plunges to his death.

Rubens painted The Fall of Phaeton in Rome. His study of works by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo influenced his evocation of complex poses and a powerful sense movement. The lighting reveals the artist’s attention to Venetian artists as well. Rubens continued to work on the painting over a number of years. He likely found the subject—which warned of the need for personal restraint and responsibility—congenial to his own philosophical beliefs.

Sir Peter Paul Rubens, The Fall of Phaeton, c. 1604/1605, probably reworked c. 1606/1608, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 1990.1.1

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Shown from the shoulders up, a man and woman face our left in profile against a dark background in this vertical portrait painting. The woman is situated closer to us so she overlaps the man, whose profile is shifted to our left. The woman’s eye we can see is brown and she looks ahead from under a gently arched eyebrow. She has a pale skin with faintly blushed cheeks, a straight nose, and her pink lips are closed. Her reddish-gold hair is pulled back into a loose knot at the base of her head, and tendrils fall down her neck. Her hair is braided across the crown of her head, which is encircled with a string of pearls and adorned with a red jewel over her forehead. Gossamer-white fabric wraps around the base of her long neck. The man behind her and to our left has a more tan complexion. He looks ahead with brown eyes under lowered eyebrows. He has a long, bumped nose and his pink lips are closed. He has auburn-brown hair and wears a burgundy-red robe around his shoulders. The pair occupy a shallow space behind a stone ledge that runs along the bottom edge of this composition. The light that illuminates them from the front creates a halo-like effect on the midnight-blue background behind them. The number

Roman historians directed glowing praise to Agrippina and her husband Germanicus (died A.D. 19). Tacitus described her as "the glory of her country," while Suetonius claimed he "possessed all the highest qualities of body and mind." Germanicus, adopted son of the emperor Tiberius, was a brilliant general. Agrippina, granddaughter of Augustus, Rome's first emperor, was renowned for devotion and bravery.

For Rubens, the couple's moral virtue was reflected in their physical beauty. Agrippina has a strong face, with glowing skin and golden hair. Notice how subtly Rubens distinguished her ivory complexion from the slightly ruddier face of her husband.

The unusual double-bust format, like the paint's luminous translucent quality, is explained by Rubens' inspiration: ancient cameos. The artist was a great collector of antiquities, including engraved gems. He planned to illustrate a publication of these small-scale sculptures, but the project was never completed. Germanicus' profile here—with aquiline nose, arched brows, and rounded chin—is similar to a design Rubens made possibly after one of his own cameos.

Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Agrippina and Germanicus, c. 1614, oil on panel, Andrew W. Mellon Fund, 1963.8.1

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Shown from the knees up, a woman with smooth, pale skin and rosy cheeks wears a satin gown and densely pleated, wide collar in this vertical portrait painting. She stands with her body angled to our left but turns to look at us from the corners of her luminous brown eyes. She has curved, black brows, a straight nose, and her strawberry-red, bow-shaped lips turn up in a slight smile. Her honey-brown hair is tightly curled under an elaborate pearl, gold, and feather headdress in the shape of a bouquet of flowers. The pearl earring in the ear we can see rests against the lace-edged ruff, which presses up against the back of her head and extends to the width of her shoulders. She wears a long-sleeved, champagne-white satin gown trimmed with gold and jewels. A white satin cloak with amber-gold lining falls open from the elbow of each sleeve. The cuffs are edged with layers of narrow lace, and she holds a mostly closed fan in her right hand, farther from us. Both arms hang by her sides. Behind her head and shoulders, cranberry-red drapery billows down from above over forest-green marble columns. Light shines from our left, illuminating a brown pillar and mantel behind the woman, along the left side of the canvas.

On at least four occasions during his long stay in Italy (1600–1609), Rubens worked in Genoa, a prosperous seaport. He painted this proud Genoese aristocrat in 1606, the year following her marriage. It is one of a number of female portraits Rubens made in Genoa, a city renowned as a paradiso delle donne (a paradise of women). The Genoese republic, governed by a wealthy oligarchy, granted women unusual respect and constitutional freedoms. The marchesa's image conveys both lively humanity and dignity and commands real physical presence. Her gaze, as well as the angle of the architecture, indicates the painting was meant to be seen from below. The painting was much larger and more imposing before the canvas was cut down in the nineteenth century.

The marchesa's stately pose is far from static; it is activated by light, by the diagonal flow of a red curtain, and by Rubens' bravura brushwork. The marchesa's silvery satin dress is built up of layers of translucent glazes and highlighted with thick, freely painted strokes. Rubens combined this bold, painterly style—which he learned from his study of Venetian artists like Veronese, Tintoretto, and Titian—with the tradition for detailed, carefully observed surfaces from his native Flanders. Compare, for example, the expressive painting technique in the dress and curtain with the precise handling of the architecture.

Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Marchesa Brigida Spinola Doria, 1606, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.60

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A nearly nude, muscular man with pale, peachy skin sits in an underground cave among seven male and two female lions in this horizontal painting. The man sits to our right of center with his legs crossed, elbows close to his body with hands clasped by his chest. His head tips back to look up through a small opening above. He has long, wavy, chestnut-brown hair and dark eyes. A white cloth wraps across his hips, and he sits on a scarlet-red swath of fabric draped up over a rock next to him. The nine lions stalk, sit, or lie down around the man. One male lion next to the man, to our left, opens his mouth with his head thrown back, curling tongue extended beyond long fangs. A human skull and other bones are strewn on the dirt ground close to us. The rocky cave curves up around the animals and man to a narrow, round opening showing blue sky above.

The Old Testament prophet Daniel, as chief counselor to the Persian king Darius, aroused the envy of the other royal ministers. Conspiring against the young Hebrew, they forced the king into condemning Daniel to a den of lions. The following dawn Darius, anxious about his friend, had the stone that sealed the entrance rolled away to discover Daniel had been miraculously saved. Rubens depicted this deliverance when, as the beasts squint and yawn at the morning light streaming into their lair, Daniel gives thanks to his God.

The monumental size of the ten lions and their placement close to the viewer heighten the sense of immediacy. Within the asymmetrical, baroque design, Daniel is the focal point even though his position is off-center. Against the brown tones of animals and rocks, his pale flesh is accented by his red and white robes as well as by the blue sky and green vines overhead.

In 1618, Rubens traded Daniel along with eight other paintings and some cash for a collection of over a hundred ancient Roman busts and statues—the prize material of any art gallery in that era. During the transaction, Rubens described this canvas as: "Daniel among many lions, taken from life. Original, entirely by my hand." The North African lions Rubens used as his models were kept in the royal menagerie at Brussels. The Gallery has in its collection a study for the lion facing the viewer, standing to Daniel's right. (This Moroccan species, now extinct in the wild, may be seen at Washington's National Zoo.)

Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Daniel in the Lions' Den, c. 1614/1616, oil on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1965.13.1

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A bearded man with copper-blond hair and flushed, peachy skin stands on a stone-gray pedestal and gestures toward a group of five more men gathered before him in this square painting. Some of the men are light-skinned, others are tan. The man on the platform, Decius Mus, stands with his ruddy face turned to our right in profile, his muscular right arm raised and right foot extended. He wears a knee-length toga, and form-fitting armor covers his torso. A sword hangs from his waist, and a scarlet-red cape flaps behind him. Piled against the pedestal in the lower left are spears, battle axes, a silvery-gray shield covered with gold lightning bolts, and an ornate crested helmet. In the upper left corner, an eagle with one wing extended hovers behind Decius Mus’s head, clutching long peach and straw-colored strands in its talons. The other five men stand clustered together on the ground to our right, facing Decius Mus. They are also bearded and muscular, and each holds a golden staff topped with a different symbol. They wear knee-length tunics and cloaks in brick red, olive green, black, or tan, and three wear armor protecting their upper bodies. Calf-high, brown boots cover their feet but leave their toes exposed. The man closest to us has gray hair and stands with his back to us. A parchment-brown animal skin speckled with brown spots covers the back of his head and wraps around his armor and tunic. The man just beyond him, to our left, faces us and holds a gold staff topped with an eagle set within a round laurel wreath. The rest of the men stand in profile, filling the right side of the composition, and they lean in toward Decius Mus. Two of them wear crested helmets, one olive green, the other charcoal gray, both with gold ornamentation on the front. The man in the gray helmet holds aloft a flag painted with vertical swipes of scarlet red and ginger brown. A sketchily painted landscape beyond the group has trees with dark brown trunks and sage-green leaves along the left edge, leading back to a line of trees in the distance. Rolling, teal-blue land along the horizon could be hazy mountains. The powder-blue sky above is scattered with butter-yellow and light gray clouds. The scene is loosely painted, especially in the costumes and background.

About 340 B.C., the cities of southern Italy revolted against the authority of Rome. At their camp near Naples, the Roman leaders were visited by a divine apparition who declared that the army of one side and the commander of the other must be sacrificed to the Underworld. The prophecy meant that the side that lost its general would be victorious. Here Decius Mus, standing on a dais, tells his troops that, for the sake of Roman victory, he would allow himself to be killed.

Symbolizing Jupiter, the Roman king of the gods, a mighty eagle clutches lightning bolts in its talons and hovers behind Decius Mus. Rubens derived the soldiers' armor, helmets, shields, and military standards from ancient Roman sculpture. The whole composition, in fact, with its large figures silhouetted in the foreground, recalls the appearance of bas-reliefs carved on Roman victory monuments.

The subject is the first in a series of eight tapestry designs on the theme of Decius Mus, which Rubens completed for a Genoese patron. The panel is a small model, that was enlarged by workshop assistants into the full-size picture, called a cartoon, that was sent to weavers in Brussels.

Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Decius Mus Addressing the Legions, probably 1616, oil on hardboard, transferred from wood and canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1957.14.2

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This horizontal painting shows a tapestry being unfurled and held up by winged, baby-like putti against a structure with gray and gold columns, seen at the edges of the composition. Taking up most of the composition, the tapestry shows two ranks of men, women, and children gathered behind two central men, who meet at the center. All the people have light or tanned skin, and the bodies we can see are muscular. In the central pair of men, the one to our left, Abraham, faces our right in profile as he holds two loaves of bread. He has a brown beard and short, wavy hair, and dark brows over a prominent nose. He looks at the other man with dark eyes and leans toward him, to our right. Abraham wears an armored breastplate over silver chainmail edged with gold, which falls to mid-thigh. A crimson-red cape wraps around his shoulders and swirls around his back. A sword hangs by his hip, and tan sandals cover his heels and shins. Behind him are seven men and one brown horse, who gnaws at its foreleg. Most of the men are bearded and five wear armored helmets. A cleanshaven man wearing a lavender-purple tunic stands with his arm slung over the horse’s neck, holding the rein between thumb and forefinger. The man to our right, Melchizedek has a long white beard and short white hair. His red cap is encircled with a wreath of dark green leaves. He wears a long-sleeved, waist-length, aquamarine-blue garment over a white skirt. A heavy, golden-yellow cape with a broad, white fur collar and lining drapes over his shoulders, and is supported by at least one attendant. Behind and around Melchizedek are eight men, women, and children, standing near stone, gray ruins. Behind Melchizedek, one portly person wearing a dark pink mantle reaches into a basket of bread held across the shoulders of a blond, bearded, bare-chested man. Closer to us, in the lower right corner of the tapestry, one man wearing a green toga and another wearing blue kneel and sit, holding oversized silver and gold urns, the size of their torsos. The man in blue, to our right, turns to look at us over his shoulder. A third large urn sits near the other man. A view into the landscape with a low, green hill and a pale blue sky is glimpsed between the groups. The tapestry showing this scene curls over at the edges where the pudgy angels lift the top edge. The top right corner of the tapestry wraps around the edge of an unseen feature of the building, next to a gray column that rises the height of the painting up along the right edge. The border of the tapestry is rose pink with stylized gold designs. One putto with brown hair holds up the left corner, and one with light gray hair holds up the middle one arm slung over the front of the tapestry. The third putto, with blond hair, hooks an arm over a leafy garland with fruit that hangs from the cornice near the top center of the composition.

Rubens served Albert and Isabella, the Spanish governors of the Netherlands, as both court artist and diplomat. Isabella commissioned Rubens to design twenty tapestries for the Convent of the Poor Clares in Madrid, where she had lived and studied as a girl. Woven in Brussels, the series—which is still in the convent (now a museum)—celebrated the Eucharist, the Christian sacrament that reenacts Jesus' transformation of bread and wine into his body and blood at the Last Supper.

This painting is a modello, or oil sketch, for one of the tapestries. It depicts the meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek (Genesis 14:1–20). Returning victorious from battle, Abraham is greeted by Melchizedek, high priest and king of Salem, who presents him with loaves of bread as attendants bring vessels of wine. Catholic theologians considered the scene to prefigure the Eucharist.

Rubens presents the narrative as though it appears on a tapestry itself. Cherubs carry the heavy, fringed fabric before an imposing architectural setting. On the right, two attendants seem to climb from a wine cellar. Are they real men standing in front of the tapestry, or images woven inside it? Such confounding illusion delighted baroque audiences.

Sir Peter Paul Rubens, The Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek, c. 1626, oil on panel, Gift of Syma Busiel, 1958.4.1

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A woman, Mary, floats in the sky surrounded by eleven winged angels above fifteen men and women gathered around an open, stone coffin in this vertical painting. All the people have pale, peachy skin. Near the top center of the composition, the woman’s torso twists to our left as her knees turn to our right. She lifts her left hand, to our right, to her chest and her other arm reaches down along her body. She looks up with dark eyes, her head tipped slightly back. She has a round face, a small nose, flushed cheeks, and a heart-shaped, rose-pink mouth. Her long, golden-brown hair falls over the shoulders of her scoop-necked, powder-blue dress. A honey-brown wrap loops over one shoulder and billows up to surround her head and shoulders. A voluminous silver cloth edged with gold flows around her hips, legs, and feet. Seven of the angels gathered near Mary’s feet and legs are baby-like, pudgy children with gossamer-white or smoke-gray wings. Most of these angels are nude but the genitals of two are covered in ivory or golden yellow cloths. Four taller, so presumably older, angels float around Mary’s head and shoulders with two to each side. Two angels to our left, wearing petal pink or butterscotch yellow, hold a ring of leaves up toward her head. The angels to our right wear ruby red or bronze gold, and they look toward Mary with their arms crossed over their chests. The hair and drapery of all of the angels flutter as if in a breeze. Below this group, on the dirt earth, twelve men and three women gather around an open stone coffin set in front of an arched opening leading into a hillside. Some in the group look into the coffin, some look up, and some look toward a man standing to our left. That man has long, chestnut-brown hair and wears a red robe over a white tunic. He looks up at Mary with his head tipped back and raises both hands high, palms facing the scene in the sky. The three women are closest to the coffin, which sits on a two-stepped platform. The woman closest to us kneels on the steps wearing a golden yellow dress. Her white-blond hair has been pulled up and braided. She pulls a pale gray or white cloth from the coffin and holds what could be a small bunch of flowers or leaves in one hand. The other two women have brown hair and stand on the far side of the coffin. Some of the men have beards, and they wear robes in cardinal red, olive green, honey yellow, and tan. A sliver of landscape with water, trees, and a hill is visible in the deep distance to our left, and the sky above is filled with slate-blue clouds. A darker bank of charcoal-gray clouds sweeps around the group in the sky to our right, and bright, yellow rays emanate down from the top center. The scene is loosely painted, especially in the clothing, to create the impression of a sheen on the fabrics.

As recounted in the New Testament's Apocrypha, Jesus' mother was physically raised (assumed) to heaven after her death. A choir of angels lifts Mary's body upward in a dramatic spiraling motion toward a burst of divine light. The twelve apostles gather around her tomb. Some raise their hands in awe; others reach down to touch her discarded shroud. The three holy women are probably Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary's two sisters. The kneeling woman holds a flower, referring to the blossoms that miraculously filled the empty coffin.

In 1611, the cathedral at Antwerp announced a competition for an Assumption altar. On February 16, 1618, Rubens submitted two models. He finished the huge altarpiece on September 30, 1626. Thus, fifteen years elapsed between the beginning and conclusion of this project. The cathedral needed the time to complete a majestic marble frame.

This oil sketch is probably a replica of Rubens' original modello, which is now in the Mauritshuis, in The Hague. The Hague study has livelier, more spontaneous brushwork, and it is arched at the top, reflecting the marble frame of the cathedral altarpiece.

Studio of Sir Peter Paul Rubens, The Assumption of the Virgin, probably mid 1620s, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.32

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A seated woman with an infant on her lap and three children are clustered on a terrace overlooking green hills and a body of water in this square painting. They all have pale skin with flushed cheeks. The group is centered in the composition, and the woman sits to our left, facing our right, almost in profile. The wooden chair is upholstered in scarlet-red fabric and a large slate-blue bird perches on the backrest. Gold-edged, red drapery hangs behind the woman, suspended from stone columns on either side of her. The woman’s brown hair is covered by a frilly, silvery-gray cap with a matching shawl layered over a short, three-quarter sleeve jacket. Her fern-green skirt, covered with a pattern of coral-red flowers and gold vines, gleams in the soft light coming from behind us. A thin black band encircles her neck, and a round, black earring dangles from the ear we can see. She bows her head slightly and gazes down at the children. The infant lies across her lap with its head coming toward us, its chubby arms reaching up to the woman while turning to look at the three standing children. They appear to be a young boy and two girls, and they all have blond hair, large brown eyes, and delicate rose-red mouths. They crowd together at the woman’s knees. The boy is taller than the girls and stands behind them, visible from the shoulders up. He is dressed in red garments and stands almost in profile to gaze up at the woman. The girls turn their heads to look directly at us. At the center of the trio, the taller girl wears a long, voluminous brown gown. Her hair is pulled back and long ringlets frame her face. She also wears round black earrings and two delicate black cords around her neck, one of which holds a gold ring. At the front, the shortest girl wears a black and white gown with a sheer neckerchief along neckline, and she rests one arm across the woman’s lap. The girl’s long, puffy, black sleeves are slashed to create openings for white fabric to show through. Her hair is also upswept with ringlets framing her face. To the right of the group is a column made of two creatures with pink female heads, faces, and nude torsos with scaly, olive-green, twisting, snake-like legs. One creature faces us and the other faces our right. The sky beyond the terrace is filled with clouds that transition from slate gray at the top to tan and rust orange where it meets the distant hills.

As she embraces a squirming baby, this mother's cradling arm traces an oval that visually encompasses the faces of her children, uniting the family.

The mother is Deborah Kip, wife of Flemish art dealer and diplomat Balthasar Gerbier. Gerbier's absence from the family portrait is a bit unusual—perhaps Rubens' focus was primarily on Deborah's maternal role. In 1629, when Rubens was sent to London as an emissary of Spanish king Phillip IV he lived for several months in the Gerbier household. He may have painted this portrait in gratitude for their hospitality or as a keepsake out of affection for the family. It is also possible that he intended to use it as a model for other compositions. The three older children appear in an ambitious political allegory Rubens presented to English king Charles I in 1630. When Rubens returned to Antwerp he took the still unfinished portrait of the Gerbier family with him. It was probably completed by one of his workshop assistants—possibly Jacob Jordaens—after Rubens' death.

Sir Peter Paul Rubens (and possibly Jacob Jordaens), Deborah Kip, Wife of Sir Balthasar Gerbier, and Her Children, 1629/1630, reworked probably mid 1640s, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Fund, 1971.18.1

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