Visual Artisit

Paul Peter Rubens

                Paul Peter Rubens was born in1577 and died in 1640. Rubens was a prolific seventeenth century Flemish Baroque Painter.  The Baroque style emphasizes movement, color, and sensuality.  Rubens was a humanist scholar. (2002-2011) Rubens medium was painting.  He typically painted things that had to do with nature or things that were related to mythology.  In is paintings you can tell the time period that he was from because of the style that he used for his paintings. 

                I chose the painting that is called Rubens, his wife Helena Fourment, and their son Peter Paul c. 1639.  The reason that I chose this painting was because it had a picture of Ruben and his son.  One thing that surprised me about this painting was that it says that the child is his son, but yet it looks to me like it is a girl.  That kind of confused me a bit.  Another part of the painting that I wanted to expound upon was the fact that his wife was a little more chunky if you will.  If you look at all of Rubens paintings of women they are all a little more heavy and that was what was considered fashionable and attractive back then.  I think it is very interesting how the times have changed so much. Back then men really liked women who had some meat on their bones and now the media puts it into our heads that women have to be stick skinny to be beautiful.  You can tell that men like women who had more weight on them because in most of the paintings that were composed in the 1600’s the women all relatively look the same.  They are not stick skinny and they typically have a ton of clothes on like Queen Elizabeth.  I thought that it was very interesting how people looked back then.  Men were typically more skinny and women were not so skinny.  And like I mentioned earlier their baby boy did not look like a baby boy at all he looked like he was a girl.  I didn’t understand that aspect of the painting.  But in this painting you can also tell that there is a lot of color and movement. 

                I chose this artist no reason in particular.  I needed an artist and you suggested this one for me to do.  I chose this particular painting because it was one that I thought I could talk about because of the way his wife looked and the way that his son looked.  I also chose this picture because it was of himself rather than something that I didn’t know the story about.  This artist left a significant legacy for his reformation counter-altarpieces, landscapes, portraits, and how he would often paint mythological things.  Rubens was known for  his Northern Baroque style, and was considered one of the greatest at it.  Finally I was surprised that all of his paintings had many things in common.  I liked how ou could easily pin point what they had in common.  Like his paintings either had to do with mythology or they were of nature or of women or queens.  I found it interesting how he portrayed women is his paintings.  I also found it interesting that all of the men in that time were attracted to women that were bigger and were not stick skinny.  It is so crazy to see how the times have changed since then.  I kind of wish that I picked a more recent artist so that it would have been easier for me to talk about , but I guess this one worked as well.