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The Epic Interactive Encyclopedia 1998
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Epic Interactive Encyclopedia, The - 1998 Edition (1998)(Epic Marketing).iso
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Rubens,_Peter_Paul
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1992-09-01
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1577-1640. Flemish painter, who brought the
exuberance of Italian Baroque to N Europe,
creating, with an army of assistants,
innumerable religious and allegorical
paintings for churches and palaces. These
show mastery of drama in large compositions,
and love of rich colour. He also painted
portraits and, in his last years, landscapes.
Rubens entered the Antwerp painters' guild
1598 and went to Italy in 1600, studying
artists of the High Renaissance. In 1603 he
visited Spain and in Madrid painted many
portraits of the Spanish nobility. From 1604
to 1608 he was in Italy again, and in 1609 he
settled in Antwerp and was appointed court
painter to the archduke Albert and his wife
Isabella. His Raising of the Cross 1610 and
Descent from the Cross 1611-14, both in
Antwerp Cathedral, show his brilliant
painterly style. He went to France 1620,
commissioned by the regent Marie de' Medici
to produce a cycle of 21 enormous canvases
allegorizing her life (Louvre, Paris). In
1628 he again went to Madrid, where he met
the painter Velazquez. In 1629-30 he was in
London as diplomatic envoy to Charles I, and
painted the ceiling of the Banqueting House
in Whitehall. Rubens's portraits range from
intimate pictures of his second wife, such as
Helene Fourment in a Fur Wrap about 1638
(Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), to dozens
of portraits of royalty.