Rubens: A PortraitRowman & Littlefield, 2002 - 404 pages The most popular painter of his day, yet an artist whose reputation has fluctuated among art scholars and critics of the succeeding centuries, Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) is chiefly remembered today for his large canvases of sensual gardens, religious scenes, and voluptuous "Rubenesque" women. In Oppenheimer's account of his life, Rubens emerges not only as a talented painter but also as an intellectual with a unique conception of beauty that proved very influential and ahead of his time. Oppenheimer explores Rubens' ideas as he tells the story of his life, which included years as a diplomat, and illuminates his response to the humanism of the Renaissance in which he lived. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
I Rubens and the Question of Beauty | 9 |
II The Idea of Absolute Beauty | 131 |
III Beauty Human and Superhuman | 213 |
IV Kings Queens Ministers and the Angelic | 253 |
V Rubens and Sensuality | 301 |
Beauty and Physics | 351 |
Notes | 355 |
| 389 | |
| 399 | |
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