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  Peter Paul Rubens: A Touch of Brilliance The exhibition brings together two collections of sketches of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) from the State Hermitage Museum and the Courtauld Institute of Art. It aims to show how Rubens developed his pictorial ideas and compositions. With the addition of loans from the National Gallery and Dulwich College Picture Gallery, London, and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, the exhibition will comprise some 40 oil sketches supplemented by 10 related drawings and a small number of finished paintings. Rubens was commissioned to produce vast decorative cycles of paintings for some of the most powerful people in Europe. The exhibition shows designs for the ceiling of the Banqueting House at Whitehall, the Jesuit church in Antwerp, the Medici Cycle, and the Triumphal Entry of Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand into Antwerp in 1635. Along with preparatory sketches for paintings such as The Conversion of St Paul, The Descent from the Cross and The Assumption of the Virgin, other oil sketches and closely related drawings and engravings are displayed. The magnificent ceiling of the Banqueting House at Whitehall (1630-1634) was commissioned by Charles I to commemorate the achievements of his father (James VI of Scotland, James I of England). The State Hermitage Museum loans the sketches for The Apotheosis of James I and The Unification of the Kingdom. The first of Rubens’ great cycles of paintings consisted of 39 ceiling paintings for the side aisles and galleries of the new Jesuit church in Antwerp (1620-1622). This was Antwerp’s first Baroque church, and Rubens’ paintings were as innovative as the architecture. What remains now of the paintings after the Jesuit church was gutted by fire in 1718 are Rubens’ oil sketches. The Hermitage has one rare preparatory black chalk drawing of St Athanasius overcoming Arius. In 1622 Rubens was commissioned to paint a series of 24 large-scale canvases for the widowed French queen Marie de Medici, for her new Luxembourg Palace in Paris. The Medici Cycle was not only considered ‘the high point of baroque decorative painting’ but also as a ‘triumph of artistic diplomacy’. Marie de Medici quarreled with her husband Henri IV and her son Louis XIII but Rubens tactfully veiled the events of her life with an ambiguous mixture of allegory, mythology and religion. The Hermitage shows five sketches for the cycle, purchased in 1772 by Catherine the Great. The final great project undertaken by Rubens featured in the exhibition is the triumphal entry of Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand into Antwerp in April 1635. Rubens’ responsibility was to make the sketches and supervise the work of an army of artists, craftsmen and carpenters who were hired to build architectural arches and stages. Eight of the sketches from the Hermitage collection are exhibited, including The Stage of Welcome and the rear face of The Arch of Ferdinand. The Conversion of St Paul is a subject Rubens returned to at different periods in his career. The Hermitage sketch The Lion Hunt illustrates these motifs. The Descent from the Cross and The Assumption of the Virgin are also themes that Rubens explored in numerous compositions. His triptych The Descent from the Cross was created in 1612-1613 for the chapel of the Guild of the Harquebusiers in Antwerp cathedral. The exhibition will offer the opportunity to compare the Courtauld 1611 sketch for the central panel with the earlier Hermitage sketch attributed to Rubens. The Hermitage’s oil sketch The Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin, circa 1611, is Rubens’ earliest known representation of the subject. |
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Copyright © 2011 State Hermitage Museum |
