Peter Paul Rubens E-Book

Narim Bender

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish Baroque painter, and proponents of an exaggerated Baroque style that emphasised movement, colour, and sensuality. He is well known for his altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects.The majority of Rubens's drawings served as a step toward a final work of art in another medium. Rubens kept his drawings close by as studio material to be used by his assistants and collaborators. It was often with the help of his drawings that assistants would execute the related paintings; later, Rubens would merely add the finishing touches. There are indications that the artist guarded his drawings from the outside world, both because he wanted no one to witness his artistic exertions, his sweat and toil, and because the drawings were considered a kind of studio secret. How careful he was about them is clear from his last will and testament, in which he stipulated that his drawings were not to be sold until it was clear that none of his children would become an artist. Rubens himself would never have thought to present them.

Leseprobe

Narim Bender

Peter Paul Rubens

81 Drawings

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG80331 Munich

Drawings

Study for a Mary Magdalen

1592-1640, Black chalk, heightened in white, 33.4 x 24.2 cm

Male Nude Tied to Tree

c. 1600, Black chalk, with pen and brown ink, on ivory laid paper, laid down on ivory wove paper, 30.8 x 20.4 cm

Anatomical studies, leg

1600, 27,4 x 17,7 cm, Anatomical study in the tradition of Leonardo da Vinci

Three Groups of Apostles in a Last Supper (recto)

1600 - 1604, Pen and brown ink, Paul Getty Museum

The recto or front of this sheet depicts three independent groups of apostles and two faint, lightly drawn sketches all related to a representation of the Last Supper. Peter Paul Rubens drew on many Italian models, including works by Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio, and Michelangelo, for inspiration in depicting the individual apostles. Rubens used a thin, fine line for the monumental figures of the apostles and cross-hatching to convey their solid forms.

Three Sketches for Medea and Her Children (verso)

1600 - 1604, Pen and brown ink, Paul Getty Museum

The verso, or reverse side of the page, shows several studies of Medea and her slain children. According to Greek legend, Medea, a princess of the foreign kingdom of Colchis, was married to Jason, who eventually left her to marry a native Greek woman. A passionate and jealous woman, Medea stopped at nothing to obtain revenge, including murdering her own children. On the right, long, sweeping lines animate the figure of Medea, whose gaping mouth seems to emit anguished wails. Rubens depicted her striding forward as she roughly carries her children, their bodies limp in death.

Anatomical Studies

1600 - 1605, Pen and brown ink, Paul Getty Museum

In a technique known by the French term écorché, three figures appear as if without skin. Drawn in luminous light brown ink, the principal figure demonstrates the muscular structure of the back, buttocks, and legs. Fascinated with the structure of the human body, Peter Paul Rubens then drew two subsidiary views of the same powerful form and a detail of the left arm from a different angle.

Rubens produced this drawing sometime during an eight-year stay in Italy, and it shows the strong influence of the new approaches he learned there. The skillfully drawn forms show his complex grasp of the human body in three dimensions. The main figure's truncated right arm suggests the artist's study of broken antique statues, while the surging, heroically proportioned forms and the extensive hatching of the musculature display his familiarity with Michelangelo's drawings. Scholars believe that Rubens produced this anatomical drawing in preparation for an instructional book on human anatomy, which he never published. After the artist's death, a printer published an engraving of this drawing in the mid-1600s.

Anatomical Studies: A Left Forearm in Two Positions and a Right Forearm

1600–1608, Drawing, pen and brown ink, 27.8 x 18.6 cm, Metropolitan Museum, NY

This impressive sheet demonstrates Rubens' understanding of the human body and his commitment to rigorous anatomical study of the sort pioneered in the Italian Renaissance. The same powerful left arm and hand appears in two positions; each view exposes in detail the structure of the underlying muscles, bones, and blood vessels. A right arm and hand is partly concealed beneath one bulky arm, and views of the left shoulder seen from above are drawn in different degrees of finish.

Rubens, one of the definitive masters of Baroque painting, had a humanist education and a deep admiration for the accomplishments of Michelangelo and other Italian artists. Like them, he used his command of anatomy to design figures in dramatic poses seen from unusual angles. Evidence suggests that Rubens planned a book of anatomical lessons with illustrations engraved after his designs. Although the project was never completed, this drawing may have been made for it, and several other sheets have been associated with it.

In order to impart a sense of energy and immediacy to his paintings, Rubens sought to master the representation of the human figure in all its actions. To achieve this end, he drew anatomy studies in the tradition of Italian Renaissance artists while in Italy between 1600 and 1608. In these drawings, Rubens used cross-hatching in pen to define the muscles and sinews of the flayed body parts that he studied from casts, a technique Leonardo also used for his own anatomy drawings, which Rubens knew. Unlike Leonardo, however, Rubens was interested in more than anatomical accuracy and clear presentation. He also created dynamic compositions, as is so masterfully demonstrated in this drawing, by studying the contorted arms from unusual angles, by inventing details, and by placing the models in a highly complex relationship.