In addition to running a large workshop in Antwerp that produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically educated humanist scholar and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV of Spain and Charles I of England.

A large portion of the nobility and bourgeoisie in the Southern Netherlands at the time sided with the Reformation and Jan Rubens also converted to Calvinism.

[7] The ruler of the Low Countries - the Catholic Spanish king Philip II - reacted to the unrest by ordering the severe repression of the followers of the Reformation.

[9] Thanks to the repeated pleas of his wife and by paying a bail bond of 6,000 thalers, Jan Rubens was permitted to leave prison after two years.

The travel ban imposed on Jan Rubens was lifted in 1578 on condition that he not settle in the Prince of Orange's possessions nor in the hereditary dominions of the Low Countries and maintain the bail bond of 6,000 thalers as security.

[9] The widow Maria Pypelinckx returned with the rest of the family (i.e. Blandina, Philip and Peter Paul) to Antwerp in 1590, where they moved into a house on the Kloosterstraat.

While his brother Philip would continue with his humanistic and scholarly education while working as a private teacher, Peter Paul first took up a position as a page to the countess Marguerite de Ligne-Arenberg, whose father-in-law had been the governor general of the Spanish Netherlands.

Even though intellectually and temperamentally suited for a career as a courtier, Rubens had from a young age been attracted by the woodblock prints of Hans Holbein the Younger and Tobias Stimmer, which he had diligently copied, along with Marcantonio Raimondi's engravings after Raphael.

[9] Verhaecht was married to Suzanna van Mockenborch, who was a granddaughter of Peter Paul Rubens' stepfather Jan de Landmetere and also a cousin of his mother.

He knew Spanish royalty and had received portrait commissions as a court painter to Albert VII, Archduke of Austria and Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain, the sovereigns of the Habsburg Netherlands.

His works from this period, such as the Adam and Eve (Rubenshuis, Antwerp, c. 1599) and the Battle of the Amazons (Bildergalerie, Potsdam-Sanssouci) show the influence of his master van Veen.

[20] He remained a strong supporter of Caravaggio's art as shown by his important role in the acquisition of The Madonna of the Rosary (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) for the St. Paul's Church in Antwerp after he had returned home.

[21] During this first stay in Rome, Rubens completed his first altarpiece commission, St. Helena with the True Cross for the Roman church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme.

His return coincided with a period of renewed prosperity in the city with the signing of the Treaty of Antwerp in April 1609, which initiated the Twelve Years' Truce.

In September 1609 Rubens was appointed as court painter[28] by Albert VII, Archduke of Austria, and Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain, sovereigns of the Habsburg Netherlands.

He also often collaborated with the many specialists active in the city, including the animal painter Frans Snyders, who contributed the eagle to Prometheus Bound (c. 1611–12, completed by 1618), and his good friend the flower-painter Jan Brueghel the Elder.

The Raising of the Cross, for example, demonstrates the artist's synthesis of Tintoretto's Crucifixion for the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice, Michelangelo's dynamic figures, and Rubens's own personal style.

[29] Rubens used the production of prints and book title-pages, especially for his friend Balthasar Moretus, the owner of the large Plantin-Moretus publishing house, to extend his fame throughout Europe during this part of his career.

In 1618, Rubens embarked upon a printmaking enterprise by soliciting an unusual triple privilege (an early form of copyright) to protect his designs in France, the Southern Netherlands, and United Provinces.

[30] He enlisted Lucas Vorsterman to engrave a number of his notable religious and mythological paintings, to which Rubens appended personal and professional dedications to noteworthy individuals in the Southern Netherlands, United Provinces, England, France, and Spain.

[35] While in Paris in 1622 to discuss the Marie de' Medici cycle, Rubens engaged in clandestine information gathering activities, which at the time was an important task of diplomats.

Major works for foreign patrons still occupied him, such as the ceiling paintings for the Banqueting House at Inigo Jones's Palace of Whitehall, but he also explored more personal artistic directions.

Hélène inspired the voluptuous figures in many of his paintings from the 1630s, including The Feast of Venus (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), The Three Graces and The Judgement of Paris (both Prado, Madrid).

In the upper niche of the retable is a marble statue depicting the Virgin as the Mater Dolorosa whose heart is pierced by a sword, which was likely sculpted by Lucas Faydherbe, a pupil of Rubens.

[42] At the request of canon van Parijs, Rubens's epitaph, written in Latin by his friend Gaspar Gevartius, was chiselled on the chapel floor.

Painted in the Baroque tradition of depicting women as soft-bodied, passive, and to the modern eye highly sexualised beings, his nudes emphasise the concepts of fertility, desire, physical beauty, temptation, and virtue.

His large-scale cycle representing Marie de' Medici focuses on several classic female archetypes like the virgin, consort, wife, widow, and diplomatic regent.

These men are twisting, reaching, bending, and grasping: all of which portrays his male subjects engaged in a great deal of physical, sometimes aggressive, action.

The allegorical and symbolic subjects he painted reference the classic masculine tropes of athleticism, high achievement, valour in war, and civil authority.

[47] Male archetypes readily found in Rubens's paintings include the hero, husband, father, civic leader, king, and the battle weary.