PETER PAUL RUBENS, IMPRESSIONS OF A CURATOR

Dr. Virginia Brilliant, Associate Curator of European Art

For sheer spectacle, the Ringling’s Rubens Galleries are unrivalled in any museum in America. The five majestic canvases by the Flemish Baroque master Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) can’t help but inspire awe. Although Michelangelo’s David has become the Museum’s foremost emblem, the paintings by Rubens are what take your breath away, and what stay with you long after you leave.

Remarkably, even perhaps surprisingly, Peter Paul Rubens: Impressions of a Master will be the Ringling’s first ever exhibition devoted to the work of its preeminent artist, its “patron saint.” At the show’s core are around forty magnificent engravings after compositions by Rubens from the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, a repository of the largest group of prints after Rubens in the world. These will be joined by several paintings by and prints after Rubens from the Ringling collection. While the paintings are well-known favorites, the prints have rarely, if ever, been on view.

A prolific artist renowned for his bravura handling of oil paint, energetic compositions, and dramatic, triumphal, and often sensual style, Rubens was also an international diplomat, a shrewd businessman, an intellectual, a friend of scholars and rulers, and a loving husband and father. The exhibition introduces this extraordinary figure and his oeuvre. These range from his altarpieces and other religious pictures, painted for the Catholic Church during an era of reformist zeal and ever-intensifying emotionalism in devotion, to his amazingly lifelike portraits of the great and good of his day, and also include violent hunt and erotic mythological scenes, whose beautiful goddesses inspired the term “Rubenesque” and the meditative landscapes of his late career. The exhibition culminates in a celebration of Rubens’s monumental decorative programs in oil paint and tapestry, made for great churches and palaces across Europe. The exhibition also invites you to discover a little-known aspect of Rubens’s artistic practice—his printmaking. At the height of his career, Rubens undertook a campaign to reproduce and disseminate his paintings, drawings, and tapestry designs in printed format. Rubens realized that through prints, his most famous compositions could be enjoyed by an international public, by those who could not afford his paintings or travel to see his magnificent schemes. Dissatisfied with the earlier, frequently unauthorized reproductions of his work, Rubens rather unusually obtained legal authority to copyright his images, engaging, it would seem, with the very same intellectual property issues that beset artists today. Yet unlike Dürer, Rembrandt, or Goya, Rubens did not make his own prints, but rather hired printmakers to translate his compositions into authorized reproductive engravings and woodcuts and supervised them vigorously. He avoided artists who tried to impose their own ideas and styles on the reproductions, encouraging printmakers to imitate his painterly effects. Rubens was not simply an artist—with the help of his workshop and his collaborators, including his printmakers, he created a global “brand,” a particular style and a hallmark of quality valued the world over.

Peter Paul Rubens: Impressions of a Master will be on view in the Searing Wing from February 17–June 3, 2012.

Related Programs:

Members Only Special Exhibition Opening: Thursday, February 16, 5:00–7:00 pm

Join fellow Members for a first look.

Gallery Walk & Talk: Making an Impression: The Printmaking Process and Rubens, Thursday, March 8, 6:00 pm

Learn about Rubens, his master printmakers, and the types of prints in the exhibition.

Ringling Partner Program: Drawing with the Master, Thursday, April 5, 6:00–8:00 pm

Draw in the galleries surrounded by the paintings and prints of Peter Paul Rubens.

Gallery Walk & Talk: Baroque Babes, Hefty Heroines and Luscious Ladies, Thursday, April 19, 6:00 pm

Meet the good, the bad, and the beautiful full-figured females featured in the special exhibition.

Gallery Walk & Talk:

Copyright Rubens, Thursday, April 26, 6:00 pm

Explore the challenges of copyright through the life of Peter Paul Rubens.

Viewpoint: Peter Paul Rubens and the Art of Diplomacy, Saturday, April 28, 10:30 am

Join author Mark Lamster as he investigates the many intertwined lives of Rubens and explains how his experience shaped his art.

Art of Food: A Baroque Banquet, Tuesday, April 24, 4:15 pm

Join Museum staff for a private tour of the special exhibition followed by an elegant baroque banquet at Treviso restaurant.