Museo del Prado

Fiona Healy

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam, Netherlands)

Alexander Vergara

Guy Delmarcel

Friso Lammertse

Annetje Boersma

Peter Paul Rubens. The Life of Achilles highlights just one aspect of Rubens's extensive oeuvre, a series of eight tapestries representing significant episodes from the life of the Greek hero Achilles. The eight oil sketches Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) painted to serve as designs for these remarkable tapestries are among the most beautiful works he produced. The sketches were subsequently worked up by Rubens and his studio and finally used as examples for far larger tapestries. This lavishly illustrated book traces the process from sketch to tapestry and sheds new light on Rubens and his working methods. Book jacket.

The Life of Achilles

Peter Paul Rubens

Kristin Lohse Belkin

Rubenianum

Rubens as Collector

A House of Art

The Judgement of Paris - the tale of the shepherd-prince who gave Venus the prize in a beaty competition - was variously treated by classical writers and became a favourite theme for artists. No painter seems to have responded to the ancient story with more intelligence and enthusiasm than Peter Paul Rubens, who devoted at least eight pictures to it. A Judgement of Paris marks every stage in Rubens' career, so that the present survey, which includes familiar and unfamiliar works, allows an insight into his entire artistic development. Since his illustrations of the subject were intended for a variety of contexts, this study also adresses many aspects of Rubens's practice and production, as well as touching on his later reputation. Rubens's response to the theme is also seen in relation to earlier literary and pictorial tradition. Paris's decision had set a problem for moralists - for his choice had led, indirectly, to the onset of the Trojan War. Some commentators held that the young man, who had two other goddesses to choose from, should have preferred Minerva, patron of learning, or at least had opted sensibly for wealth, in the person of Juno. Allegorical readings has some influence on the depiction and interpretation of the theme in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is shown how Rubens came to favour the Venetian artistic convention which focussed on the moment prior to Paris's decision, thus effectively rejecting the interpretation of the Judgement as a moral condemnation. Rubens came to see the myth as a universal image of the problem of choice. But also, more specifically, he seems to have associated Paris with the artist as arbiter of beauty - the final theme explored in this illuminating book.

A Question of Choice

Rubens and the Judgement of Paris

Fiona Healy

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