Rubens: A Portrait

Front Cover
Ivan R. Dee, 2002 M05 21 - 301 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
Select Bibliography
389
Index
399
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About the author (2002)

Paul Oppenheimer , professor of Comparative Medieval Literature and English at the City College of the City University of New York and author of Infinite Desire: A Guide to Modern Guilt, lives in New York City.

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