Rubens' House

We walked the few blocks over to Rubens' House. Pedro Pablo Rubens was no starving artist. He was the most successful and sought-after artist of his age (and maybe any age)--an age when the church in Rome was pulling out all the artistic and other stops in its counter-reformation--he ran a large studio in which Van Dyck, Snyders, and many others were his assistants and students. "Team Rubens" is not a misnomer. Very often he would design the overall piece but leave much of the painting to assistants, himself doing faces and other crucial aspects. Among his associates and friends and patrons were nobility and even royalty. His house in Antwerp is modeled after an Italian palazzo. It was much changed over the centuries but now is restored to some semblance of the original. Of course it is loaded with art.

17th century sketch of the house

And painting

Thus; the triumphal arch Rubens created for himself

A bit of the building, from the courtyard

I was so stunned by the blond curls that I forgot to get
the name of the artist...undoubtedly someone of the 17th
century

Self-portrait with son

Moses and his Ethiopian wife

Van Dyck's portrait of William II (of Orange)

Portrait of Anthony Van Dyck; long thought to be
by Rubens, now thought to be by Van Dyck himself

See...Pietro Pauolo Rubens

An early Rubens Adam and Eve

And a later, far more adventurous Crucifixion (not cruciform;
and said to be one of the first not showing the two thieves)

Gallery of Cornelis van der Geest, by Willem van Haecht; gallery paintings
are a genre that arose in the 17th century; this one is of interest since a couple
or three of the paintings depicted in it sit right next to it on the wall at the
Rubens House...

Including this portrait of Albrecht Durer (in the middle
of the gallery, just off-right)

And since Rubens also is depicted, pointing something out to Archuduke Albert
and the Infanta Isabella, rulers of the Low Countries at the time; lower left