A generous selection of Rubens' best drawings, chiefly portraits and religious and mythical scenes, that fully reveal his supreme artistic gifts. Publisher's note.

Rubens and the Eloquence of Drawing re-examines the early graphic practice of the preeminent northern Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640) in light of early modern traditions of eloquence, particularly as promoted in the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Flemish, Neostoic circles of philologist, Justus Lipsius (1547–1606). Focusing on the roles that rhetorical and pedagogical considerations played in the artist’s approach to disegno during and following his formative Roman period (1600–08), this volume highlights Rubens’s high ambitions for the intimate medium of drawing as a primary site for generating meaningful and original ideas for his larger artistic enterprise. As in the Lipsian realm of writing personal letters – the humanist activity then described as a cognate activity to the practice of drawing – a Senecan approach to eclecticism, a commitment to emulation, and an Aristotelian concern for joining form to content all played important roles. Two chapter-long studies of individual drawings serve to demonstrate the relevance of these interdisciplinary rhetorical concerns to Rubens’s early practice of drawing. Focusing on Rubens’s Medea Fleeing with Her Dead Children (Los Angeles, Getty Museum), and Kneeling Man (Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen), these close-looking case studies demonstrate Rubens’s commitments to creating new models of eloquent drawing and to highlighting his own status as an inimitable maker. Demonstrating the force and quality of Rubens’s intellect in the medium then most associated with the closest ideas of the artist, such designs were arguably created as more robust pedagogical and preparatory models that could help strengthen art itself for a new and often troubled age.

Oil sketches by Peter Paul Rubens—created at speed and in the heat of invention with a colorful loaded brush—convey all the spontaneity of the great Flemish painter’s creative process. This ravishing book draws from both private and public collections to present in full color 40 of Rubens’s oil sketches. Viewers will find in these informal paintings an enchanting intimacy and gain a new appreciation of Rubens’s capacity for invention and improvisation, and of his special genius for dramatic design and coloristic brilliance. The book investigates the role of the oil sketch in Rubens’s work; the development of the artist’s themes and narratives in his multiple sketches; and the history of the appreciation of his oil sketches. It also explores some of the unique aspects of his techniques and materials. By revealing the oil sketches as the most direct record of Rubens’s creative process, the book presents him as the greatest and most fluent practitioner of this vibrant and vital medium.

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Jan. 15-Apr. 3, 2005.

Peter Paul Rubens' gifts as an artist were as comprehensive as they were supreme. A prolific painter of illimitable resource and invention, he was a master of intellect and emotion, figure and form, color and sweep. In all his artistic endeavors, he proved himself the true heir of Renaissance art of both the North and the South, inspired by — and assimilating — the best of both. Yet he was very much a man of his time and in retrospect the most powerful, exuberant, and sensuous exponent of the Baroque style in painting. His extraordinary drawings reflect all of these qualities but color, and in them the viewer can clearly perceive — and enjoy at leisure — the awesome range of Rubens' genius. In this superb collection of 44 of his choicest drawings are deeply probing portraits and powerful religious and mythical scenes. His self-portrait, full of opulent and flowing forms, reaches out to us with a startling, penetrating gaze. His individual portraits of a young girl and of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, reveal in both instances a touching sensitivity mixed with aristocratic self-possession. Here, too, are two scenes of poignant tenderness suspended in a majestic flow of movement: one depicting the entombment of Christ; the other, Venus lamenting Adonis. The exciting "The Death of Hippolytus" and "A Battle of Greeks and Amazons" reveal Rubens' total command of complex patterns of action and movement. These and over three dozen other works offer limitless pleasure and stimulation to all who prize and wish to study the art of drawing at its most inspired. Meticulously reproduced on fine-quality paper, and offered at a very reasonable price, this beautiful book belongs with others in your collection, reflecting the greatest achievements in Western art.