Peter Graves

Biography

Stop and of noble bearing, had the regular factions, the pink cheeks, the brown hair and in the eyes the brightness of a contained passion. Its company was seductive, its good natured temperament, its pleasing conversation, its penetrating talent vivaz and, its way to speak calm and judicious and the tone of its pleasant voice, which him made persuasivo eloquent and. This way it describes to Roger de Piles (1699) to Peter Paul Rubens, one of the great geniuses of Baroque and the one of the main figures of the History of the Art, when reuniting in a single person singular artistic dowries, important the modern language and, humanistic knowledge dominion Latin several and a special ability for the diplomacy, becoming example for a good handful of artists, among others the Spanish Vela'zquez. The family of Rubens was original of Amberes where his father, Jan Rubens had reached the position of municipal magistrate, after to have studied laws in the universities of Lovaina, Padua and Rome. Nevertheless, the serious political and religious events that live the Netherlands in the decade on 1560 take to the Jan young person to exile in 1568, due to the calvinismo suspicions that fell on him. The Rubens family - Jan had married with Maria Pypelinx and several children had already been born was transferred to Cologne where Jan entered the service of Ana de Sajonia, the wife of Guillermo de Orange. The relation between Jan and its lady went more and more narrowing, until finishing being surprised by Guillermo the Taciturn one. The adultery was punished with the capital punishment, but the performance of Doña Maria Pypelinx in this occasion was determining, obtaining that the capital punishment was exchanged by the jail, the payment of a considerable guarantee and exile. Jan left the prison and it settled with his in Siegen, near Colony, where Peter would be born Paul the 28 of June of 1577. The following year they were transferred Colony, once Jan was pardoned completely, city in the Rubens lived until the death of the family father, in 1589. Maria Pypelinx and its children would return soon after to Amberes, since no had embraced the calvinismo and nothing tied to them to the German city, settling in flamenco downtown where his grandfathers had prospered like phamacist. Small Peter Paul already had initiated his formation in the Catholic School and with the jesuitas in Colony, reason why it continued his studies in Amberes. It frequented the Latin School of Rombant Verdonck where it knew Balthasar Moretus and it was related to classic Greek and the Latins, but this academic formation lasted just a short time, since in the house of the Rubens it was not swum in the abundance and it was necessary to equip Blandine, the of marriageable age daughter. The familiar economic shortage would force that as much Philip - the older brother born in 1573- as Peter Paul left the studies and gained the life by their account. Philip obtained a seat of librarian in Rome, whereas Peter Paul was placed like paje to the service of countess Margarita of the Ligne d´Aremberg, widow of Felipe de Lalaing, in Oudenaarde. This experience would serve to him as base to learn the cortesanas ways that later will be to him so useful in their trips by Europe. But the young person Peter Paul does not want to remain long time in that servile office, reason why painter decides to become, although we do not know the reasons that took to this decision, aiming the own one You pound that "they did not have, in the beginning, another purpose that the one to learn it in vain". Its first artistic learning began towards 1591, being its teacher Tobias Veraecht, painter of landscapes with which as soon as it was time. The election of Veraecht as professor is quite surprising; the reason we must look for it in financial or familiar questions since he was a distant relative of Maria Pypelinx. Once left the factory of Veraecht, where it hardly remained a year, he was transferred to the factory of Adam van Noort, "habilísimo painter of figures" but of "abject and libertine conduct and brutal humor" reason why the young apprentice left his factory to be transferred to the one of Otto van Veen, one of the best active teachers then in Amberes and the one that influenced more in its youthful style, in addition to Holbein and Durero, whose engravings copied from early age. In 1598, with 21 years, Rubens finalizes its period of learning and surpasses the corresponding examination of teacher before the Guilda of San Lucas de Amberes, corporation in which it would be integrated like independent painter. Although the stay in the factory of Otto van Veen was not very fruitful for the young painter, Go Veen inculcó to its disciple the necessity to go to even Italy to make a second learning. Peter Paul undertook that trip the 9 of May of 1600 with the objective to extend his artistic formation, studying works of the Renaissance and the classic sculpture. He traveled in company of young called painter Deodato of Monte and his first shutdown was Venice, where it knew a mantuano nobleman whom it recommended to him to work in the cut of the Duke of Mantua, Vincenzo Gonzaga, peculiar protective sincere personage of the art and the artists for whose family or Tiziano, Mantegna or Roman Giulio had worked. In the cut of Mantua he will as much remain during almost nine years, serving to the Duke in artistic questions as diplomatic. In the summer of 1601 Rubens he is in Rome, where his brother was working Philip like librarian. The painting of Caravaggio calls its attention and Angel is interested specially in the Sistine Chapel painted by Miguel and the Stanzias de Rafael. In the Eternal City it has the first public opportunity to demonstrate his dowries like painter, since the decoration is in charge to him of a chapel of the church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme of Rome, church of which had been titular cardinal archduke Alberto of Austria, at the moment governor of the Netherlands. The success achieved by Rubens with these paintings will be great since although flamenco him it is considered Italian by style. In 1602 it is again working in Mantua where it receives an important assignment the following year. It must make a trip to Spain to give to king Felipe III and his court favorite, the Duke of Lerma, several presents, among them a good number of copies of the great artists of the Renaissance, Tiziano and Rafael among others. The Duke of Mantua wished with these presents to obtain the position of admiral of the Spanish fleet. When arriving at Valladolid, Peter Paul will make the impressive ecuestre picture of the Duke of Lerma, with which he will obtain great fame between the Spanish cortesanos, specially the Marquess of Seven Churches, Don Rodrigo Calderón, the right hand of Lerma. The achieved successes allowed Rubens to receive supplies to stay in the Spanish cut but it would return to the service of Vincenzo Gonzaga, because the Spanish artistic atmosphere of that moment possibly was not of its affability, to the time that wished to continue with its learning. After a new period in Mantua, he returns at the end of 1605 to Rome where he makes an important order for the church of San Felipe Neri. In these dates he will make several trips to Genoa where he will execute a good number of pictures of the nobility of the place, insufflating the freshness and the necessary vitality like renewing the concept of aristocratic picture. He will be in 1604 when the Duke of Mantua makes to Rubens the first order of importance, the decoration of the church of the Trinidad de Mantua where he shows his admiration by the veneciana school integrated by Tiziano, Tintoretto, Veronés or Correggio. The works nail of this Italian stay will be the paintings made for the greater altar of the Chiesa Nuova, the Roman church of Santa Maria in Vallicella, ordered by the Oratorianos at the end of 1606. In October of 1608 Rubens it returns of urgent way to Flandes. The reason will be the delicate state of health of its mother, Doña Maria Pypelinx, arriving at Amberes when the mother already had passed away. Although Peter Paul had itself it jeopardize to return to Mantua, the supply made by archdukes Alberto and Clear Isabel Eugenia, governors of the Netherlands, cannot be rejected. The position of "painter of the house of its Heights Sereni'simas" is offered to him, allowing him to settle in Amberes and fixing an annual pay of 500 ducados, receiving separate works painted for the governors, to the time that exempted to him of taxes and reduced the debts to him established with the Guilda. The following year to settle down in Amberes, the 3 of October of 1609, Rubens contracted marriage with Isabella Brandt, the daughter of a high municipal civil employee called Jan Brandt. The fiancèe was fourteen years younger than the painter but this was not inconvenient so that they established a perfect relation, being born of this marriage three children: Clear Night love song, Albert and Nicolas. Soon the first important orders will arrive between which they emphasize the Adoration of the Magicians whom today the Museum of the Prado conserves and two great trípticos for the churches of Amberes: The erection and the Descent de la Cruz, works with which will harvest a sonorous success, showing its admiration and dependency of the Italian school, from the Carracci to Caravaggio, happening through Tiziano, Tintoretto or Miguel Angel. Soon after settling in Amberes a house with a great garden was constructed where it would build an extensive study, an ample library and a room to lodge his collections. The house responded to the characteristics of the Italian architecture and the decoration, being designed by he himself. In the inscriptions that they decorated the arc of the garden could be read: "We let to the Gods the care try its gifts and grant us to us what it agrees to us more, because they want to the men more of those than more than what the men are wanted to themselves"; "We request the health of the body and the one of the spirit. A strong soul that nonsubject to the death, inaccessible to the rage and vain desires ". In both inscriptions its neostoic conception of the life is shown, in syntony with good part of the flamenco humanists of the moment with which it established one narrow relation: Right Lipsio, Ludovicus Nonnius or Gaspar Gevaerts. In these Rubens dates it already took a tremendously methodical rate of life. One rose to four in the morning, oía mass and it was put to work during twelve hours, to the time that a reader aloud read works to him of Plutarco, Tito Livio or Séneca. It made a food frugal so that it did not interfere in the work and once finished this one, made a stroll to horse by the environs of Amberes. It returned to house to have supper in company of the friends, enjoying the conversations. The works painted by Rubens in the decade of 1610 still present/display a significant dependency of the flamenco tradition, although the new features learned in Italy will begin to take force with the passage of time, like we can observe in the cycle painted for the Jesuitas de Amberes (1617-1621) made up of two great linen cloths of altar and 39 paintings for the lateral vaults of the galleries and ships, scenes in which its dependency of the decorations of the venecianos palaces painted by Tiziano, Veronés or Tintoretto is appraised clearly. The 39 paintings were made by the factory, in which Van Dyck was the main assistant. And it is that good part of the works made by Rubens would be executed by their ample one and fruitful factory since, as he himself says in 1618 to Carleton, "I am overloaded of orders for buildings particular public and collections so that will be to me impossible to accept other new ones before several years pass". Rubens made the sketches and their assistants - between whom the best artists of the moment like Van Dyck counted themselves, Lucas Vosterman, Paulus Pontius, Jacob Jordaens or Christoffel Jeghers- executed the works following the main lines marked by the teacher, without never losing this one the control on the final result of the product, since it always altered works of the assistants before giving them by finalized. Also will be habitual its collaboration with other artists, establishing excellent relations with its colleagues. Jan Brueghel de Velours, Paul de Vos, Lucas van Uden or Frans Snyders are some of the names that habitually worked in equality of conditions with Rubens, sharing the company/signature in the definitive works. The fame reached about the painting of Rubens exceeded the borders of the Netherlands and orders arrived to him from different places from Europe. These orders went accompanied of distinctions and special honors, like which it received from Prince de Baviera or king Christian of Denmark. The first important work for one cuts foreigner will arrive from Paris, concretely of the queen mother Doña Maria de Medicis. One is two cycles of paintings destined to decorate the Palace of the Luxembourg in Paris, one of them dedicated to raise the memory of late king Enrique IV - after many delays only sketches and outlines were not gotten to make, having left and the other dedicated cycle to glorify the reign of Maria de Medicis, cycle that would conclude in the fixed term. The contract was signed in the first months of 1622 and the twenty-four pictures were given in the occasion of the wedding by powers between Carlos I of England and princess Enriqueta Maria de Borbón, in 1625. Rubens attended this wedding and there it knew an important and influential personage, the Duke of Buckingham, fundamental piece in the next trip that the painter makes to British earth. Before making this trip to Paris, Rubens had tried, between 1623 and 1625, with the aid of a resident relative in Holland, to negotiate a treaty of peace between Flandes and Holland, negotiation that occurred to the fret before the Dutch refusal to reach La Paz. This failure took to an intensification of the military activities in the zone, taking Ambrosio de Spinola the fortress from Breda in 1625, episode that will be immortalized by Vela'zquez in the Lances. Another one of the important cycles made by Rubens in 1625 is the design of the carpets of the Triumph of the Eucaristía by order of the archiduquesa Clear Isabel Eugenia, governor of the Netherlands and one of the main clients of the flamenco teacher. The series was dedicated to the convent of Descalzas Real of Madrid, where today the original ones can be seen. In 1626, soon after returning of Paris, Rubens and its family they leave Amberes since the city undergoes a plague epidemic. They retire to Laeken where they have a field house, but Isabella passes away, leaving to the painter widower and with two children. The loss of the wife produced a great pain to him and, to possibly forget, it did not doubt in participating in the diplomatic missions that would take to Spain and England with the objective of which both countries reached La Paz and ended the conflict that bled the economy and the lives of a good number of men and women of the Netherlands. It has been certain well that the conversations to reach La Paz had taken of secret way between Rubens and Gerbier, a flamenco painter of the confidence of the Duke of Buckingham, for a time but the opposition of the count-Duke of Olive groves to end the hostilities ended these initial conversations in wet paper. But at the beginning of the year 1628 Don Ambrosio de Spinola convinced Felipe IV so that the conversations were retaken, although the monarch did not trust the painter for so high company at first. The arrival from Rubens to Madrid in the month of August would cause a change in the attitude of king, naming to Rubens Secretario of the Council of Flandes and trusting the negotiations to him with England. The stay of the flamenco teacher in the Spanish cut allowed him to eet again itself with the work of Tiziano and to copy all the pictures that the Hispanic real house had, according to narrates Pacheco to us. This encounter with the art of the veneciano will allow that a decisive change in the painting of Rubens takes place, leaving the escultóricas forms of previous works to be interested in a world in which the light and the color play a determining role now. Before leaving to London, in April of 1629, also it had opportunity to make some works, like the ecuestres pictures of Felipe IV and Felipe II or the Immaculate Conception for the Marquess of Leganés that today conserves the Museum of the Prado. During this Madrilenian stay, Rubens agreed with the young person Vela'zquez and was one of the impellers of which the Sevillian made his immediate trip to Italy to extend his artistic knowledge. In London it remained a period of ten months but pains it had time to work, although Carlos I was a great lover of the painting. It received all type of honors, between which a doctorate by the university of Cambridge is included, it visited the art collections and it narrowed contacts with antique dealers and humanists. Tired to pass as much time abroad - "more than no other thing in the world it would wish to return to my house and to have left I for the rest of my life" wrote there to his Gevaerts- friend and with his almost solved diplomatic duties - the treaty that same year of 1630- would be signed embarked in Dover the 23 of March, putting aim to its stage of great trips, having fulfilled its objectives, as much personal - horseman by the kings of Spain and England like diplomats was named. A time in Amberes asks for the archiduquesa unique Isabel "as compensates to all my services, that exempted to me of new missions and it let serve it to me from my own house. Of whichever favors it has granted this one to me has been the one that more work cost to me to obtain ". Obtained this, its immediate objective will be to find wife: "a young woman of a honest but bourgeois family, because nobody can try to convince to me that it makes a wedding cortesana. It scares the pride, an inherent vice to the nobility and in special in that sex, and for that reason I want to choose which it is not shamed to see take the brushes me. And to tell the truth, it would be difficult to change the treasure to me of my freedom by the hugs of an old woman ". The chosen one will be Hélène Fourment, of sixteen years, daughter of a prosperous retailer of silks and carpets with which Rubens had one narrow friendship. This marriage with the Hélène young person will suppose a tonic species for the mature painter, insufflating to him desire to live. Of the marriage five children will be born: Clear Johanna, Frans, Isabella Hélène, Peter Paul and Constancia Albertina, this last one been born posthumously. Hélène will become from that moment the main model for the painter, as much for the saints as for Venus. The conjugal happiness that the artist lives expresses in pictures like the Garden of the love of the Museum of the Prado or the numerous pictures carried out by its wife, some of them accompanied by its children. One of the last orders made by the archiduquesa Clear Isabel Eugenia will be the Tríptico of San Ildefonso for the church of Santiago de Coudenberg of Brussels. The governor passed away in December of 1633, being replaced in the position by the cardinal-infant Don Fernando of Austria, smaller brother of Felipe IV. The Council of the city of Amberes invited to the new governor to that it made a triunfal entrance in the villa, being Rubens the one in charge to organize the preparations. In the works of the "Pomp Introitus Ferdinandi" the city with five tablados triunfales arcs and four participated to all the anturpienses artists - except Crayer and Van Dyck- engalanando itself that were admired by Don Fernando the 17 of April of 1635, in a route by the streets that lasted two hours. Rubens will enter the service of the new governor and it will do a spectacular ecuestre picture to him that today conserves the Museum of the Prado. Their last works for the European monarchies will be related to the Iberian Peninsula and the Islands Brita'nicas and England. For king Carlos I of England it painted the decoration of the ceiling of the Banqueting House in the Palace of Whitehall of London, room that would be dedicated to raise the reign of the deceased Jacobo I. For Felipe IV of Spain makes one of its more important decorations: the series for the Tower of the Shutdown, pavilion of hunting located in the mount of the Brown, the neighborhoods of Madrid. 120 linen cloths were in charge to him about, of which 63 had like thematic mythology whereas the others were hunting subjects, that were derived by Rubens their "specialists": Paul de Vos and Peter Snayers. The majority of linen cloths of the Tower of the Shutdown was lost in 1710, due to the sacking of the pavilion on the part of the troops of archduke Carlos during the War of Succession. Of the original decoration forty pictures are only conserved about, of which 14 are of mitológico subject, inspired these in the "Metamorphosis" of Ovid. Rubens was limited to paint the sketches - it approximately made them in two months that were spent to linen cloth through their assistants Erasmus Quellinus, Theodor van Thulden, Jan Cossiers, Cornelis de Vos and Jacob Jordaens, altering with his own hands these works before sending them to Madrid. The drop attacks were more and more frequent in these years, reason why it would be forced to delegate good part of the work in the factory in these last times. There Hastiado of the world of the cut and wishing "to take to a calm life next to my woman and my children and not to wish another thing in the world more than to live" Rubens peacefully buys the castle of Het Steen, in the neighborhoods of Amberes, and passes more and more time, painting landscapes for its own enjoyment and enjoys, delegating the work and the organization from the factory to Lucas Fayd´herbe. In a letter written to his good Peiresc friend it says now "already for three years, by the divine grace, I have been being able to recover spirit La Paz after resigning to any occupation different from my loved profession (...) saw lost in that labyrinth, harassed day and night Me by an endless succession of urgent preoccupations, far from house during long months and forced to remain continuously in the Court". Peculiarly, this last stage of happiness and tranquillity will be in which it paints his more violent and cruel religious works, as we can observe in the Martyrdom of San Livinio of the Musées Royaux DES Beaux Arts of Brussels. The last work made by Rubens would be the linen cloth of Andrómeda and Perseo that conserves the Museum of the Prado, work that left without finishing since it surprised the death to him while it worked in him. Rubens passed away in its house of Amberes the 30 of May of 1640, on the verge of turning the 63 years. The Baroque one was lost the painter who better would interpret his premises, being its overwhelming influence, as much by the ample amount of artists who went to their factory as by the engravings that were made of their work, arriving at all the European cuts and becoming fundamental piece for the learning of the young artists.