The Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens created a breathtaking body of work, which included many altarpieces, murals, and triptychs commissioned by wealthy patrons. The sketches and paintings Rubens created as foundations for these works reveal much about the artist’s working practices. This volume reproduces more than seventy works from the celebrated collections at The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and London’s Courtauld Institute Gallery. It allows readers to follow the development of such masterpieces as The Descent from the Cross, The Medici Cycle, and the Ceiling of the Banqueting House in Whitehall.
Four major essays and several accompanying texts written by experts in Flemish painting discuss the significance of preparatory studies against the backdrop of Early Modern Europe, trace the fascinating history of one such collection, capture the artist at a particularly fertile period of his career, and focus on the ceiling of The Banqueting House. A treat for Rubens scholars and fans of Baroque art, this book is an important contribution to the study of the man often referred to as "the God of painters."
