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.

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

Focusing on four Rubens paintings created between 1610 and 1620 - Prometheus Bound, The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus, Juno and Argus, and The Finding of Erichthonius - this book re-examines the artist's approach to classical mythology. These theoretically-informed readings provide a fuller understanding of the dynamics of Rubens's copious visual language, and can serve as methodological templates for looking at, and reading of, many other of his complex inventions. Even by the standards of erudition commonly applied to Rubens's oeuvre as a whole, these four paintings were created during a period characterized by a particularly intense engagement on his part with questions of artistic originality and ideal style. Furthermore, the learned themes of these images clearly point to a rarefied audience that could appreciate the intertextual qualities of ancient myths. Like the artist himself, these ideal beholders cultivated a mode of viewing steeped in classical and renaissance theories of literary and rhetorical composition. Thus through these close readings, the author illuminates the manner in which the rhetorical and poetic conventions of the period, as well as the growing appreciation for the various allegorical layers of fables, lead to a better understanding of Rubens's pictorial archaeology of classical myths.

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.