Book Description

A magnificent selection of drawings by one of the greatest artists of the seventeenth century

For the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), drawing was a fundamental activity. Ranging from delightful renderings of children and elegant portraits of noblemen and women to vigorous animal studies and beautiful landscapes, Rubens’s drawings are renowned for their superb quality and variety.

This exquisite book presents—in beautiful full-color reproductions—more than one hundred of the finest and most representative of Rubens’s drawings, from private and public collections around the world. Essays by Anne-Marie Logan and Michiel C. Plomp provide overviews of Rubens’s career as a draftsman and of the dispersal of his drawings among collectors after his death. The authors discuss the various functions of Rubens’s drawings as preparatory studies for paintings, sculpture, architecture, prints, and book illustrations. The volume also includes a sampling of the artist’s early anatomical studies and copies after antique sculpture as well as several sheets by other artists that Rubens retouched, restored, or reworked.

This publication accompanies an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (January 14 to April 3, 2005)—the most comprehensive exhibition of Rubens’s drawings ever held in the United States.

Anne-Marie Logan is Guest Research Curator and Michiel C. Plomp is Associate Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.


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Book Description

A simple mission lies at the heart of Rubens: to give the most complete picture of the great Flemish master as possible. No fewer than 163 paintings, sketches, and drawings by the artist, plus nine tapestries, are put to this worthy task. A faithful, objective understanding of Rubens arises, from his beginnings under the influence of his master Otto Venius and Italian art, right through to the end of his career, when he basked in a major Spanish commission. Rubens is at home in all genres, and all are represented here: from landscapes to portraits, from altarpieces to genre scenes, and historical paintings too, of course. Even the talents of the decorator are revealed in his painted sketches, drawings, and tapestries.

For this publication, the master's oeuvre is divided into five groupings: Rubens’ Beginnings, Rubens and Italy, The Middle-Class Patron, Official Commissions, and Secular Subject Matter. Through the inclusion of tapestries, particular attention is paid to the genesis of his art. Works such as Descent from the Cross, Laying in the Sepulchre, The Stoning of Saint Stephen, and three altarpieces created for the city of Lille's churches and convents are included. From this impressive homage to Rubens, the general reader, connoisseur, and historian will all hopefully come to know Rubens better, and also be stimulated by the juxtaposition of works never presented in this way before.

Published on the occasion of Rubens, an exhibition at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Lille, France. Glory to the Homer of painting.--Eugène Delacroix Essays by Arnauld Brejon de Lavergnée, Barbara Brejon de Lavergnée, Hans Vlieghe, Hans Devisscher, Alexis Donetzkoff, Jacques Foucart, Barbara Gaehtgens, Natalia Gritsaï, Alexis Merle du Bourg and Jean Vittet. Hardcover, 8.25 x 11 in. / 320 pgs / 180 color and 110 b&w. ... Read more

Book Description

For Rembrandt as for Shakespeare, all the world was indeed a stage, and he knew in exhaustive detail the tactics of its performance; the strutting and mincing; the wardrobe and the face paint; the full repertoire of gesture and grimace; the flutter of hands and the roll of the eyes; the belly laugh and the half-stifled sob. He knew what it looked like to seduce, to intimidate, to wheedle, and to console; to strike a pose or preach a sermon; to shake a fist or uncover a breast; how to sin and how to atone; how to commit murder and how to commit suicide. No artist had ever been so fascinated by the fashioning of personae, beginning with his own. No painter ever looked with such unsparing intelligence or such bottomless compassion at our entrances and our exits and the whole rowdy show in between.

More than three centuries after his death, Rembrandt remains the most deeply loved of all the great masters of painting, his face so familiar to us from the self-portraits painted at every stage in his life, yet still so mysterious. As with Shakespeare, the facts of his life are hard to come by; the Leiden miller's son who briefly found fame in Amsterdam, whose genius was fitfully recognized by his contemporaries, who fell into bankruptcy and died in poverty. So there is probably no other painter whose life has engendered more legends, nor to whom more unlikely pictures have been attributed (a process now undergoing rigorous reversal). Rembrandt's Eyes, about which Simon Schama has been thinking for more than twenty years, shows that the true biography of Rembrandt is to be discovered in his pictures. Though a succession of superbly incisive descriptions and interpretations of Rembrandt's paintings threaded into his narrative, he allows us to see Rembrandt's life clearly and to think about it afresh.

But this book moves far beyond the bounds of conventional biography or art history. With extraordinary imaginative sympathy, Schama conjures up the world in which Rembrandt moved -- its sounds, smells and tastes as well as its politics; the influences on him of the wars of the Protestant United Provinces against Spain, of the extreme Calvinism of his native Leiden, of the demands of patrons and the ambitions of contemporaries; the importance of his beloved Saskia and, after her death (Rembrandt was later forced to sell her grave, so complete was his ruin), of his mistress Hendrickje Stoffels; and, above all, the profound effect on him of the great master of the immediately preceding generation, the Catholic painter from Antwerp, Peter Paul Rubens: "the prince of painters and the painter of princes" with whom Rembrandt was obsessed for the first part of his life, and whose career was the shaping force that drove Rembrandt to test the farthest reaches of his own originality.

Rembrandt's Eyes shows us why Rembrandt is such a thrilling painter, so revolutionary in his art, so penetrating of the hearts of those who have looked for three hundred years at his pictures. Above all, Schama's understanding of Rembrandt's mind and the dynamic of his life allows him to re-create Rembrandt's life on the page. Through a combination of scholarship and literary skill, Schama allows us to actually see that life through Rembrandt's own eyes. In overcoming the paucity of conventional historical evidence, it is the most intelligently true biography of Rembrandt that has ever been written, and the most dazzling achievement to date of the art historian whose work has been hailed as "marvelously rich and eloquent" ... "rare, imaginative" ... "provocative" ... "astoundingly learned with verve, humor, and an unflagging sense of delight" ... that of "a master storyteller ... and a master of history."*

Quotes from the New York Times Book Review, Time, the New York Times, The Independent on Sunday, andNature, respectively.

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Reviews (18)

perceptive portrait of r.v.r.
Rembrandt left behind more self-portraits than any artist before or since. With his new book Rembrandt's Eyes, historian Simon Schama has added a new portrait of the artist, this one in meticulously and exhaustively researched, rhapsodically written prose.

Schama's heavy tome makes every attempt to be a definitive work on the painter, and it succeeds. First and foremost it is a narrative of the life and work of Rembrandt van Rijn, although calling it a "biography" somehow sounds reductive. It is equal parts analysis of Rembrandt's painting, documentation of his life, and history of seventeenth century Holland, so sections of the book can be read with profit by anyone studying the artist, his art, or the social history of the times.

The Rembrandt of Schama's book is a complex man, with hubris, greed and an enormous talent for portraiture. Early on he takes the monumentally cocky step of signing only his first name -- no "van Rijn" -- as if he knew his paintings would be studied for centuries to come. His understanding of humans and their personae was without parallel, Schama writes. "No painter would ever understand the theatricality of social life as well as Rembrandt. He saw the actors in men and the men in actors."

As his title suggests, Schama finds special messages in the eyes of Rembrandt's subjects. He notes that in art education painters were taught to put special care into their depiction of the whites of eyes, yet in many of Rembrandt's works -- Schama points to "The Artist in his Studio" (1629) -- the eyes are dull, dark pits. "When Rembrandt made eyes," Schama says, "he did so purposefully," and so in Rembrandt's Eyes he continually returns to the haunting eyes the painter painted.

Most of all, Schama's book is a meditative, entranced attempt to get behind the faces we see in Rembrandt's self-portraits. Schama reads Rembrandt's self-portraits in various costumes -- as a merchant, as a soldier, for example -- as indications of his elusiveness, as if each portrait were meant to conceal rather than reveal its subject. In analysis of one self-portrait, Schama writes that the painter "has disappeared inside his persona," inscrutable beyond the dead dark eyes of the painting. The artist's disguise hides his true self, and the critic is left to speculate. It seems that in this case Schama is grasping (as art historians must) at facts and attitudes that can never be certainly known, constructing and imputing elaborate guesses that fail precisely because the painter has succeeded.

Schama's reverence for Rembrandt and art in general winds up being both a virtue and a vice. The book begins with an epigraph from Paul Valery: "We should apologize for daring to speak about painting." It is difficult to imagine a guide through this world who is more well-versed and in love with his subject. But do we really want our biographers to be respectful to the point of silence? Nobody wants to learn about the masters from a guide who finds them too sublime to defile with comment. Granted, a hefty book like this is hardly "silence," but Schama's hushed tones do get distracting.

This book has the virtue of being as close to exhaustive about its subject as one could hope. There is little psychological interpretation that Schama leaves undone, and little consequential biographical detail that he leaves unmentioned. Rembrandt's Eyes, a mammoth book that takes on with grace the equally mammoth task of explaining what is behind the brooding eyes of Rembrandt's portraits, will be a definitive work on the painter and his work.

A masterpiece worthy of Rembrandt's life and works
Simon Schama's REMBRANDT'S EYES is undoubtedly one of the authoritative works on Rembrandt's life and paintings. Schama vividly depicts the unparalled and tortured genius of Rembrandt, a man who was brilliant in success and even more so during tragedy. To understand Rembrandt's paintings is to understand the man behind each brushstroke: strong-willed, prideful, and uncompromising in his art. Schama conveys the essence of Rembrandt with such force and effectiveness that we cannot help but appreciate Rembrandt's tragic life and artistic genius.

REMBRANDT'S EYES contains beautiful illustrations of all of Rembrandt's major works; the analysis of each is detailed, clear, and interesting. Through the course of the book, you will be fascinated by Rembrandt's self-portraits and the level of understanding with which he painted himself. Perhaps no other artist has given us such a powerful autobiography without the use of a single written word. This deep understanding of the human soul is evident in all of his works. Schama explains Rembrandt's paintings and his techniques in a comprehensive and powerful manner. If you are interested at all in the truly unique and fascinating genius of Rembrandt, REMBRANDT'S EYES is a must.

I would highly recommend REMBRANDT'S EYES to any person interested in art history, Dutch painting, or just Rembrandt. This book also serves as a powerful autobiography of a man with a very interesting story. Be forewarned though: this book is very long, and putting it down may be hard.

Doesn't have a focus and objective....very boring
When i bought this book, I thought that it would be an amazing and definitive book about one of the most brilliant genius of art.
But i was wrong, this is doesn't have a point, it goes to the biography of Rubens fathers, passing thru history, economy, and anything else you imagine, this is so borring for the people that actually want to know about Rembrandt and his work. So if you are looking for a book abou Rembrand and his work, this IS NOT....

GUARANTEED, this one never goes out of style!!!
Reading,or even browsing,this huge achievement simply overwhelms. Now it's obvious that all old masters books are immortal (especially if they have pictures) since the works have already passed the time test. But Mr. Schama's REMBRANDT's EYES must surpass just about every old master book in every way. It's one of those works that makes you glad we live in a society that can mass produce this kind of thing!!If you're an expert (which I am definitely not),I'll bet you'll totally agree with me. If you're a skeptic,or even a beer guzzling barhopper,you should still buy this book. Browse,read the author's insights,and be enthralled that a fellow like Rembrandt existed 350 years ago. For he is like Shakespeare,a monumental genius,born about 40 years after the Bard.But as a painter, he is a heck of a lot more accessible.His art is universal,no translations required,and no Cliff Notes either! Accompanied by beautiful photos,and brilliant commentary on many of his great works, you can buy this now,and know it will give you pleasure at the amazing creativity of a universal genius,even in old age! BTW, the artist's self portraits are only many of the wonders here,and they do show him in his older years.

luminescent portrait of the artist and the age
1629 -- the 60th year of the war for the Netherland. 128 thousand 777 men are under arms for the Dutch Republic .Prince Huygens, Rembrandt's benefactor, deciphers intercepted dispatches in the Prince of Orange's headquarters at Hertogenbosch. In Calvinist controlled Leiden 25 year old Rembrandt takes to portraying himself in armour. By 1631, when Rembrandt relocates to Amsterdam, the city's competing churches have come to a grudging accomodation. Despite the fractious political climate the city is a hot bed of manufacture and trade with the Orient. The savour of spices and silks, the rhythms of urban industries-- cloth fabrication., paper making, gem cutting, weapons forging, chimes through its neighborhoods. The artist thrives for a time in the vibrant economic climate. His pictures of prosperous burghers (and of course, himself) and religious scenes ingrain an exotic, cross cultural vocabulary and intrigue.

Schama's analysis of the paintings is as scholarly as his depiction of the historical forces which were shaping them, in a Europe ripped by religious war. He looks also into the unsettled ambition embedded in Rembrandt's artistry. No major artist of his time or since has painted so many self portraits, in so many guises. No other artist absorbed more of the texture of his time and place. His influences were political, theological, social as well as aesthetic and developed into an idiosyncratic genius. Rembrandt's eyes as the author notes, provide a lens into these turbulent times and the passions of the artist. Twenty years from conception to print, Schama's opus spans its subject with a detail as fine as the lace on one of the artist's collar pieces.

The author contrasts Jean Paul Rubens's ethereal idealism to Rembrandt's earthy colloquialism as metaphor for the political divisions of the times. Rembrandt was treading new ground in art. The compassionate consideration of human dilemmas and blemishes was a rebellion against the politicization of art in a time when painting was dogmatic and polemical. Rembrandt's tactile accouterments, lustrous colours, give an eidetic quality to metal, fabric or paper. The works had plural focal points producing a visual dynamic. The creamy pallor of irradiated faces are juxtaposed against some intricately detailed artifact-- lace, gemstone, coral, armour-- and those against props providing subtle sub-texts. They are bathed in an illogical light which seems to emanate rather than reflect from its characters. A narrative and cosmopolitan bustle energizes his artwork.

'The Repentant Judas', is one the best studies of the artist's ability to synthesize surreal contexts and intensely expressive figures into a cohesive spirituality. Schama spends 12 written pages on that magical evocation of purposeful community 'The Night Watch'. 'Two Old Men Disputing' shows Rembrandt's preoccupation with representing age and decay in dignified elegance. He had, though, had no talent for business or orderly finances. He was a compulsive accumulator and a mark for bad investments. That would eventually impoverish him even as his fame became well established. This was not lost in his later portraits, more abstract and rendered with a pensive, sombre defiance. The stern expressions of the 'The Sampling Officials' could well be the those of his creditors. Some transcendence reasserted itself in his final works, most remarkably in vital mysteries of 'The Jewish Bride' and 'Simeon and the Christ Child'

Schama writes objective prose, with an impressive command of his subject. This is no esoteric meditation. It is a exhaustive study of the development of a craft and of the society that spawned it. The book is a beautifully composited coffee table book with a distinctive literary and historical flavour. Schama has produced one of the great artist biographies of all time, and a depiction of an age, as any age is most clearly represented by its art. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

A Great Collection This is Not
This book is not one of the best among those in the Dover Art Library. A handful (about a half-dozen) of pictures are good with sufficient details and/or a tight organization to be appreciated. Most are so-so. Some are definitely fillers. It does not help that Rubens himself, according to the Publisher's Note, did not think highly of his own drawings and did not even sign a single one of them. All told, this selection is not impressive.

Rubens's paintings, rather than his drawings, should rightly be his legacy.

excellent
This is an excellent book on the drawings of Rubens. The works are very diverse and a whole range of different media are used. This is a great book to study for an art student. ... Read more

Book Description

Two important collections of Rubens’ oil sketches and drawings are brought together in this revealing look at the artist’s inspiration, technique, and place in history.

The Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens created a breathtaking body of work, which included many altarpieces, murals, and triptychs commissioned by wealthy patrons. The sketches and paintings Rubens created as foundations for these works reveal much about the artist’s working practices. This volume reproduces more than seventy works from the celebrated collections at The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and London’s Courtauld Institute Gallery. It allows readers to follow the development of such masterpieces as The Descent from the Cross, The Medici Cycle, and the Ceiling of the Banqueting House in Whitehall.

Four major essays and several accompanying texts written by experts in Flemish painting discuss the significance of preparatory studies against the backdrop of Early Modern Europe, trace the fascinating history of one such collection, capture the artist at a particularly fertile period of his career, and focus on the ceiling of The Banqueting House. A treat for Rubens scholars and fans of Baroque art, this book is an important contribution to the study of the man often referred to as "the God of painters." ... Read more

Reviews (2)

how i can see it detail before i buy it?
how i can see it detail before i buy it?

The finest book about Rubens
Scribner's fantastic book about Rubens is a must-read for any art student or art lover. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Rubens for amateurs!
...This small book is a treasure for those who are just going into the Art world and Rubens...it is a piece of a collection worth having...it gives you a little about the artist...and his most important paintings...I started my collection a year ago, and can tell you for the price there is not a better buy! ... Read more

Book Description

Oil sketches by Peter Paul Rubens—created at speed and in the heat of invention with a colorful loaded brush—convey all the spontaneity of the great Flemish painter’s creative process. This ravishing book draws from both private and public collections to present in full color 40 of Rubens’s oil sketches. Viewers will find in these informal paintings an enchanting intimacy and gain a new appreciation of Rubens’s capacity for invention and improvisation, and of his special genius for dramatic design and coloristic brilliance.

The book investigates the role of the oil sketch in Rubens’s work; the development of the artist’s themes and narratives in his multiple sketches; and the history of the appreciation of his oil sketches. It also explores some of the unique aspects of his techniques and materials. By revealing the oil sketches as the most direct record of Rubens’s creative process, the book presents him as the greatest and most fluent practitioner of this vibrant and vital medium.

Peter C. Sutton is executive director of the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut. Marjorie E. Wieseman is curator of European painting and sculpture at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Sutton and Wieseman previously collaborated on The Age of Rubens exhibition held in museums in Boston and Toledo, Ohio. Nico van Hout is a conservator at the Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp.

This book is the catalogue of the exhibition that appears at the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut, from October 2, 2004, to January 30, 2005, then travels to the Berkeley Art Museum from March 2 to May 15, 2005, and to the Cincinnati Art Museum from June 14 to September 11, 2005. The exhibition at the Bruce Museum coincides with the Metropolitan Museum’s exhibition of Rubens’s Drawings (p. 35A), and a number of joint events have been arranged.
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Book Description

This Pegasus flexi original explores images of the women in Rubens’ life as depicted by one of the world’s most passionate painters.

More than thirty color reproductions of Rubens’ portraits are united by the theme of women: the faces and bodies of his wives figure prominently in each. From paintings of his first and second wives Isabella and Helene, to scenes depicting mythological or religious events, to images of daily life in seventeenth-century Antwerp, the full breadth of Rubens’ prolific oeuvre is represented in this collection. Informative essays reveal what Rubens’ portrayals of women tell us about the private life of this influential master. ... Read more

Book Description

This gorgeous book focuses on the landscape paintings of Peter Paul Rubens, in particular one of the greatest treasures in London`s National Gallery-Landscape with Het Steen. Brown places Rubens`s landscapes in the tradition of Flemish landscape painting, analyzes his working methods, describes his years at Het Steen, and examines the influence of his works on British painters. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A Wonderful Introduction
I read this book for an upper-level college art history class and loved every page. I was actually sad that I finished the book! Few art history books combine the stunning visual images and masterful prose that this one does. A very interesting and informative book that will introduce you to one of the most under-appreciated artists - the genius Peter Paul Rubens. ... Read more

Book Description

Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens, according to his biographer Oppenheimer, did more that create remarkable baroque paintings and pictures of 'Rubenesque' nudes; he originated a powerful new idea of beauty that originates to this day. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

very good
I love this book because the colour illustrations are of good quality and size to appreciate the technique, and the multitude of black and white illustrations and thumbnails give a better perspective on this important aspect of Rubens's art. These illustrations of painted copies and retouched drawings are rare and hard to find in any other publication.
The text gives very interesting bits of information about the artist's approach to copying and his choice of paintings to copy.
I wish this book had more text and colour illustrations (it has 21), but I still think it is great for any Rubens fan. ... Read more

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Child Life, published by Benjamin Franklin Literary & Medical Society, Inc. on April 1, 2000. The length of the article is 1928 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Antonio Van Dyck and His Master Rubens.(an episode from the life of Van Dyck, as a student)
Author: Mary Newlin Roberts
Publication: Child Life (Magazine/Journal)
Date: April 1, 2000
Publisher: Benjamin Franklin Literary & Medical Society, Inc.
Volume: 79Issue: 3Page: 4

Article Type: Biography

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Book Description

Rubens and his Spanish Patrons examines an important and neglected aspect of the most internationally-renowned artist of the seventeenth century.As a native of the Spanish Netherlands, Rubens found an audience among Spanish aristocratic and royal collectors, including Philip IV, the Spanish king for whom Rubens worked as both artist and diplomat. Focusing on the artist's production for his Spanish patrons and his visits to Spain, this study also examines the presence of Rubens' worksand their reception, as well as the artistic environment in that country during the seventeenth century. ... Read more