The formation of two states instead of one - in the north of Holland, in the south - Flanders. The artistic traditions of the Netherlands of the 16th century continued to develop in the 17th century in the art of Flanders and Holland, and formed the basis of the Flemish and Dutch schools painting. The reason for the division of the country was the Reformation movement. Protestants did not need church art; they considered it unnecessary. The government of the Netherlands was in the hands of the cruel Spanish King Philip II, who enforced the power of the Catholic Church by force. People driven to despair rose up in armed rebellion. In the north of the country, where Protestants were the majority, they won, and a new state was proclaimed - the Republic of the United Provinces, where the leading role belonged to Holland, and soon the whole country began to be called that.
The Spaniards won in the south of the Netherlands. Philip II handed over these areas to his beloved daughter Infanta Isabella. The state began to be called Flanders; it was completely dependent on Spain at that time. Maintaining the role of the aristocracy and the rich patrician, the church in public life countries. Baroque became the dominant movement in fine arts Flanders of the 17th century. At the same time, characteristic features Flemish painting– bright cheerfulness, realism, nationality, solemn festivity of images.
The greatest master of Flemish painting was Peter Paul Rubens, who was patronized by the Spanish Infanta Isabella, ruler of Flanders.
Peter Paul Rubens(1577-1640) - humanist, artist, diplomat, head of Flemish painting and the largest master of the 17th century in Europe. He was born in Germany because his Protestant father took the family away from Spanish persecution abroad, where they experienced many hardships. After the death of his father, it was decided to return home to Flanders, his homeland, converting to the Catholic faith for this.
A wide range of interests and a variety of themes in the artist’s paintings. Altar paintings for the church of Santa Maria Vallicella in Rome (1608): “Madonna and Child, St. Gregory the Great and Saints” 1606-07, oil on canvas, 477 x 288 cm (1)
religious paintings: triptych “The Raising of the Cross” 1610-1611(2) - brought fame to a young artist. "Adoration of the Magi" (1625).
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A series of sketches of decorative arches. Mythological paintings: “Bacchanalia” (1615), “Perseus and Andromeda” 1620-1621(1). Paintings with hunting scenes: “Lion Hunt” 1621(2), etc.
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Rubens's fame crossed the borders of Flanders; the French queen Marie de' Medici invited him to Paris to create a cycle of 24 large paintings with episodes from the life and reign of the late King Henry IV, her husband, and Marie de Medici herself. All paintings “The History of Marie de Medici and Henry IV” (1622-1625), according to the terms of the agreement, were to be painted exclusively by the hand of Rubens alone in two years. The order was grandiose and the most difficult in Rubens' life. In addition, Marie de Medici did not shine with beauty and was distinguished by a quarrelsome character and built intrigues in the struggle for power against her own son Louis XIII. The series of paintings was completed on time. Maria de Medici was very pleased. On each of them, in addition to real heroes, there are many characters allegorical, which personify certain virtues and qualities. In “Presenting the Portrait to Henry IV” (1), only the king himself is a real figure; he meets his bride through the portrait (personal acquaintance before the wedding of royal spouses was not accepted), and Zeus and Hera sitting on the clouds is an allegory of a strong family union, Hymen, offering a portrait - the god of the newlyweds, an allegory of marriage ties; Cupid, the deity of love, points out the visible virtues of the bride, and a female figure in a military helmet (an allegory of France) whispers words of approval into his ear. "Coronation of Marie de' Medici" (2)
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Portraits by Rubens: “Self-portrait with Isabella Brandt” - the artist’s first wife, who later died of the plague along with her daughter. Rebens experienced this loss very hard (1). For several years he could not paint, or even live in Antwerp, where everything reminded him of his beloved family. But these years saw the heyday of Rubens' diplomatic activity. As a diplomat, he visited Holland and Spain and brilliantly negotiated with the English King Charles I.
“Portrait of the Duke of Lerma” 1603(2), “Portrait of the Archduchess Isabella’s chambermaid” 1625(3), “Portrait of Helen Fourment with children” - the second wife who returned the joy of life to the artist, 1636-1638 (4)
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Rubens was a wealthy artist, to whom success came during his lifetime. He spent his last years in the Sten castle he acquired in the vicinity of Antwerp, retired there and painted landscapes and peasant scenes, without trying to sell paintings. Genre paintings: “Village holiday” - “Kermessa” 1630(1), “Peasant dance” 1636-1640(2)..
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Man and nature in the works of Rubens. He began to paint realistic landscapes. One of them was a landscape: “Carriers of Stones” 1620(1). His “Landscape with a Rainbow” 1630(2) is widely known.
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The graphic heritage of Rubens, cardboards for tapestries. Rubens' students were also successful, they became famous artists. Big names of Flemish art of the 17th century: Antoniswad Dyck, Jacob Jordaens and Frans Snyders - all of them came from Rubens' workshop.
The central importance of Rubens' workshop in the development of 17th-century Flemish art.
Anthonyswan Dyck(1599-1641) – creator of a new pan-European type of representative aristocratic portrait. Italian, Antwerp, English periods in the artist’s work. Religious paintings: “St. Martin" (1620-1621). Portraits: “Self-Portrait” 1620-1630 – gg.(1), “Family Portrait” 1621(2), “Portrait of the Marchioness of Brignola-Sale” 1622-1627, “Portrait of the Archduchess Isabella” 1628, “Portrait of Charles I Hunting” 1635 (3), "Portrait of George Digby and William Russell" 1637(4).
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In the first years of the 17th century, Flemish painting did not arise out of nowhere. Uniquely original and new in its external appearance and internal content, it had very definite sources, the influence of which, although it largely fertilized it, had for it, as for a truly great art, predominantly stimulating value. Formally associated with a number of immediately preceding or contemporary ones artistic phenomena(both national and foreign), she joined the great tradition of Western European classical art, which reflected the pace of human creative thought, which had gone through a grandiose path of development from the Middle Ages through the great spiritual conquests of the Renaissance - to the 17th century. The Flemish masters were able to express much of what advanced humanity lived in the artistic images they generated. Western Europe in the post-Renaissance era. This determined the most important, fundamental value of Flemish art of the 17th century. It is from this position that one should first of all proceed when assessing its historical role.
Flemish painting of the 17th century was second only to Italian art the brightest product of the Baroque style. A significant part of the artistic production of Flanders, including the best, most creatively valuable works of Flemish art of this time, were more or less subject to the laws of this style. The connection of Flemish art with the high, fundamental spiritual movements of the era was concretely realized in the fact that it clearly expressed the revolution in the aesthetic ideas of Western European people and a radical revaluation of values that marked the edge of the 16th and 17th centuries. In this sense, the painters of Flanders kept pace with their era. A new sense of space, time, dynamic life rhythm, which had established itself by the time they entered the arena of artistic life in Europe, which resulted in a radical restructuring of human self-awareness in his relationship to the world, received a bright and nationally original refraction in Flemish art. In his best monuments, these cardinal problems were solved deeply and on a large scale.
There were two main sources of Flemish painting of the 17th century: one of them was various movements Dutch painting 16th century; others were served by Italian art of the post-Renaissance period. Both the first and second sources played a dual role in the formation of the style of Flemish art. On the one hand, they enriched it with valuable elements, on the other hand, they introduced into it a certain amount of artistic “slag” that had clogged creative activity Flemish masters. Speaking about the influence of the national tradition of Dutch art on Flemish painting, it should be noted that this influence primarily came to Flemish painters not from the masters who worked at the end of the 16th century, that is, immediately before the heyday Flemish school painting, but from those artists whose work dates back to the beginning and middle of the 16th century.
The art of the 16th century in the Netherlands did not represent any kind of holistic stylistic phenomenon that had clearly defined artistic characteristics. It split into a number of movements, sometimes sharply different from each other in their formal features and figurative structure. In general, it did not rise to the level of the high spiritual and aesthetic magnitude that it so significantly possessed dutch art 15th century. Thus, during the 16th century, the prerequisites were determined in Dutch artistic culture, on the basis of which two great national schools of the 17th century emerged - Dutch and Flemish. The most important thing here was that already in the works Dutch masters At the beginning of this century, the emancipation of art was first outlined, and then clearly established, its separation into a special sphere of activity, developing according to specific laws characteristic of artistic creativity. This meant the final elimination of the medieval tradition, which by that time had lost any positive meaning. While preserving religious subjects artistic creativity became fundamentally secular. At the same time, there was a process of formation of individual artistic genres, the same ones that reached their highest, brilliant development in the work of the Dutch and Flemish masters of the 17th century. Portraits, landscapes, still lifes, everyday images, images with religious or mythological subjects attracted the separate attention of artists. Gradually, specialists emerged who worked primarily or entirely in the field of certain genres.
At the end of the 16th century artistic life Flanders was swept by a wave in the broadest possible way spread and gained the greatest popularity in the highest circles of cosmopolitan society artistic movement, which went down in history under the name of Dutch Romanism. For Flemish painters of the 17th century, the successive connection with Dutch Romanism, with which they came into most direct and immediate contact, brought the greatest harm, as it stimulated the strengthening in their work of lightweight and cliché elements, devoid of signs of national identity. As for the relationship between the Flemish school of painting and the art of Italy, it can be considered in two main aspects.
In a certain sense, the contact of Flemish art with Italian artistic culture had the most important, fundamental meaning for him, outweighing everything that was brought into him by the local, national tradition. Italian art served as the main intermediary for Flemish artists of the 17th century, through which their successive connection with the great pan-European classical artistic tradition. Perception of monuments created by genius Italian masters, and contact with the values of the spiritual culture of Italy alone were capable of filling the consciousness of Flemish painters with a feeling of high aesthetic pathos, connecting their thoughts with the course of development of great human thought of the era, and conveying to them the lofty ideals of humanism. In this regard, the importance of Italy for the masters of Flanders was of incomparable value.
But there were other connections, narrower and more local, determined by the influence on Flemish painting of individual artistic phenomena of contemporary or earlier Italian art. Thus, one can note the penetration into Flanders of echoes of Caravaggio’s artistic discoveries, which, having given rise to the boring, dependent-provincial phenomenon of Flemish Caravaggism, at the same time enriched the work of some outstanding Flemish painters with a number of new, vibrant means of artistic expression.
The influence of the artistic standards put forward at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries by the famous Bologna Academy was very strongly felt on the Flemish school of painting of the 17th century. Having assumed the character of unshakable laws, which gained wide popularity in many countries of Western Europe, penetrating into the art of Flanders, these standards introduced into it elements of cold academicism, impersonal conventionality of images, and stereotyped plot solutions. But although the influence of Bolognese academicism apparently supported and strengthened the influence of Dutch Romanism, unlike the latter, it brought not only a negative beginning to the Flemish masters. Due to the fact that this movement of Italian art had the signs of a strict professional school, very high in its level, growing on the traditions of the Renaissance artistic achievements, it sometimes stimulated among Flemish painters a beneficial tendency to achieve orderly harmony of compositional and rhythmic structures and precision of linear drawing.
Thus, thanks to such powerful sources, the art of Flanders of the 17th century revealed itself with the full strength and emotionality of a new art, bringing a life-giving current to the old figurative system, and gaining such famous artists as Rubens and Van Dyck.
This was the time when the great national art schools Italy, Flanders, Spain, France, Holland (read about modern Netherlands). Each of them reveals significant originality, a vibrant national identity, due to the peculiarities of the historical and cultural development of a particular country, the nature of social life, the specifics of artistic traditions.
At the same time, the art of the 17th century, like the entire culture of this time, is characterized by a number of common features, associated with the new worldview of the era, manifested in all spheres of its spiritual life. The connection with reality, with its most diverse aspects and phenomena, becomes immeasurably multifaceted and active in comparison with the previous period. The amazing successes of science, especially mathematics, mechanics, astronomy, natural science, and geography, extremely expand and complicate the idea of the world as a boundless, changeable and contradictory unity. There is a clear feeling of man’s indissoluble connection with this world, his dependence on surrounding reality, from the conditions and circumstances of its existence. In the light of these ideas, it turns out to be natural to reject the anthropocentrism characteristic of the culture of the Renaissance. Not only man, but also the entire diversity of reality, its complex and multi-valued connections with man become the subject of creative cognition and comprehension in literature and the fine arts. That is why, developing largely Renaissance traditions, the art of the 17th century extremely expanded the scope of its interests. Accordingly, its themes and plot repertoire are enriched, new independent genres are developed, and those that already existed during the Renaissance are developed or deepened. In particular, religious and mythological stories- from violent pathos and decorativeness in the work of Baroque masters to life-specific concreteness and even everyday character in the works of realist artists. But the complexity and diversity of life’s ideas no longer fit into the forms of these traditional genres; they require more immediate, direct interaction artistic image and reality. That's why special meaning Such genres as portrait and landscape acquired during this period. Increasing interest in a specific person, in everyone individual characteristics physical appearance and character of a person lead to extraordinary flourishing portrait art, in particular, to the development psychological portrait. The perception of nature also becomes more meaningful and active. A new understanding of the world contributes to the desire to better understand her life, its diversity, its complex relationships with man. The range of artistic interpretation of nature turns out to be very wide during this period - from a grandiose-scale image that contains the concept of the universe as a whole (in the works of Poussin, Rubens) to accurate display characteristic national motifs (in art Dutch artists). Closer creative exploration nature leads to the most important discoveries in the transmission of space, lighting, and general patterns of its life. That is why the achievements of landscape art of the 17th century became the basis for its development in the subsequent period.
Flemish Art of the 17th Century.
General characteristics of Flemish painting in the 17th century.
For Dutch art as a whole, the 16th century is a transitional period. After the bright realistic and at the same time national forms into which the work of such masters as Luke of Leiden and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, nicknamed “The Peasant,” resulted, comes a period of strong admiration for the art of Italy. This is the time of the final overcoming of the medieval church style, the establishment of new pictorial genres: historical, allegorical, mythological, images of everyday life, landscape. The cold virtuosity of the so-called “mannerist” movement, dominant in Italy in the second half of the 16th century, had a strong impact on the art of Flanders. At the same time, other trends also penetrate into it, in particular the academicism of the Bolognese school, as well as the living, realistic stream of Caravaggio’s art. Dutch art assimilated the formal achievements of Italy and thereby created a solid foundation for its new rise. However, the latter is largely based on the fruitful use of national realistic traditions. Since the beginning of the 17th century, this rise has proceeded at an unusually rapid pace. The triumphant church, the court, the aristocracy and the big bourgeoisie make varied and urgent demands on art. The predominant role of the church in the culture of the era under consideration led to the development of religious themes both in the literature of Flanders and in its fine arts. The church was the largest customer and required a lot of paintings for restored and newly built churches. All the prerequisites for Baroque painting were evident. Large altar paintings, with their emotional richness and drama, were supposed to captivate the mass audience and at the same time serve as conductors of the ideas of triumphant Catholicism. They were supposed to simultaneously contribute to the splendor of the decoration of the temples and evoke the impression of solemnity. As for ceiling painting, in Flanders, unlike Italy, it was little developed. The demands of the noble-court circles or the big bourgeoisie were in many ways similar. Both of them spared no expense in decorating the walls of their family castles or their rich city dwellings. Mythological subjects and other themes of a secular nature were appropriate here, of which images of hunting and dead nature received particular development.
This purpose determined the large size of the paintings, the monumental interpretation of forms and broad decorativeism. The latter quality was achieved mainly by coloristic effects. Bright colors combined with a wide masterful technique were one of the most characteristic properties of Flemish painting during its heyday.
All the properties and features of the Flemish school were most fully and vividly manifested in the work of Rubens, who is not only the largest painter of Flanders, but generally one of greatest artists past.
Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)
Famous Flemish painter, master of portraits, mythological and religious paintings, etchings. His work occurred during the period when, after the division of the Netherlands into Holland and Flanders, the largest city in Flanders, Antwerp, the artist’s homeland, began to revive after the war. In art, the head and leader was Peter Paul Rubens, whose work, along with the work of Jacob Jordaens, Frans Snyders (1579–1657) and, of course, Van Dyck, determined the path of development of the Flemish school of painting in the second half of the 17th century.
Anthony Van Dyck was born on March 22, 1599 in Antwerp, the seventh child in the family of a wealthy textile merchant, Frans Van Dyck, who was friends with many Antwerp artists. In 1609, at the age of 10, he was sent to a workshop famous painter Hendrik van Balen (1574/75–1632), who painted paintings on mythological themes.
In 1615–1616 Van Dyck opened his own workshop. TO early works includes his Self-Portrait (c. 1615, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum), distinguished by its grace and elegance. In 1618–1620 he created a cycle of 13 panels depicting Christ and the apostles: St. Simon (c. 1618, London, private collection), St. Matthew (c. 1618, London, private collection). The expressive faces of the apostles are painted in a free pictorial manner. Nowadays, a significant part of the boards from this cycle are scattered throughout museums around the world. In 1618, Van Dyck was accepted as a master into the Guild of Painters of St. Luke and, already having his own workshop, collaborated with Rubens, working as an assistant in his workshop.
From 1618 to 1620, Van Dyck created works on religious themes, often in several versions: Crowning with Thorns (1621, 1st Berlin version - not preserved; 2nd - Madrid, Prado); Kiss of Judas (c. 1618–1620, 1st version - Madrid, Prado; 2nd - Minneapolis, Institute of Arts); Carrying the Cross (c. 1617–1618, Antwerp, Sint-Pauluskerk); St. Martin and the Beggars (1620–1621, 1st version - Windsor Castle, Royal Collection; 2nd version - Zaventem, Church of San Martin), Martyrdom of St. Sebastian (1624–1625, Munich, Alte Pinakothek).
Anthony Van Dyck owes his fame to the portrait genre, which in the hierarchy of genres European painting occupied a low position. However, by this time a tradition of portrait art had already developed in Flanders. Van Dyck painted hundreds of portraits, several self-portraits, and became one of the creators of the 17th century ceremonial portrait. In portraits of his contemporaries, he showed their intellectual, emotional world, spiritual life, and living human character. In his early portraits, Van Dyck painted wealthy townspeople, artists with families. The theme of depicting families and married couples, so common in the art of the Netherlands in the 16th century, was picked up by Van Dyck: Portrait of Frans Snyders with Margaret de Vos (c. 1621, Kassel, Picture gallery). In the famous Family Portrait (1623, St. Petersburg, Hermitage), Van Dyck conveyed natural movements and gestures, seemingly random poses, lively glances directed at the viewer - he introduces all these innovations into the art of portraiture. TO famous portraits This period also includes the Portrait of Cornelius van der Geest (c. 1620, London, National Gallery), covered in subtle psychologism.
In 1920, on the initiative of the royal marshal Thomas Howerd, Earl of Arendelle (1585–1646), Van Dyck was invited to England as a court painter. Here he gets acquainted with the works High Renaissance. The artist repeatedly painted portraits of the earl and members of his family, the best of which is Portrait of the Earl of Arendelle with his grandson Lord Montervers (c. 1635, Arendelle Castle, Collection of the Duke of Norfolk).
Van Dyck, having spent about a year in England, makes a trip to Italy, where he visits a number of cities in Lady Arendelle's retinue. On the way to Italy, he stops at Antwetpen, where he paints several paintings, the most famous of which is the portrait of Rubens's wife, Portrait of Isabella Brandt (c. 1621, Washington, National Gallery of Art).
In Italy, where Van Dyck spent from 1621 to 1627, he studied the works Italian painting. Admiring the work of Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese (1528–1588), he makes sketches from nature and sketches of paintings famous artists, which made up the Italian album (London, British Museum) Van Dyck. Having settled in Genoa, he lived for a long time in Rome, Mantua, Venice, Turin, Florence, continuing to paint portraits. Among them is the emphatically ceremonial Portrait of Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio (1623, Florence, Pitti Gallery), combining external representation with the revelation of a rich inner life.
In 1624, Van Dyck received an invitation from the Viceroy of Sicily to visit Palermo, where he painted a generational Portrait of the Viceroy Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy (1624), as well as a large altar painting for the Palermo church of the Oratorio del Rosario Madonna of the Rosary (1624–1627) - the largest an order Van Dyck received from the church during the Italian period.
Returning to Genoa, Van Dyck, already a famous, fashionable portrait painter, painted brilliant portrait paintings. He creates complex compositions of ceremonial portraits, in which the somewhat romanticized, majestic world of the aristocracy appears. He depicts those portrayed in full height against the background of luxurious palaces, open terraces, majestic landscapes, gives them proud poses and spectacular gestures. The splendor of their costumes with brilliantly detailed fabrics and flowing folds enhances the significance of the images. Portrait of the Marquise Elena Grimaldi Cattaneo with a black servant (1623, Washington, National Gallery of Art), Portrait of the Marquise Balbi (c. 1623, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art), Portrait of Paola Adorno with her son (c. 1623, Washington, National Gallery of Art) , group portrait Portrait of the Lomellini family (1624–1626, Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland). At this time, he turns to the image of elderly people, marked by the stamp of a lived life: Portrait of a Senator and Portrait of a Senator's Wife (1622–1627, Berlin, State museums), as well as to the depiction of children, creating for the first time in the history of art the first ceremonial children's group portrait: Portrait of the children of the de Franchi family (1627, London, National Gallery).
In 1627 Van Dyck returned to Antwerp, where he stayed until 1632, taking over the inheritance after the death of his father. His popularity is enormous: he carries out orders for large altar paintings for the churches of Antwerp, Ghent, Courtrai, Melechen, portraits, paintings on mythological themes. For the Jesuit Church, Van Dyck painted a large altarpiece, The Vision of St. Augustine (1628, Antwerp, Church of St. Augustine), for the chapel of the Brotherhood of Bachelors in the Antwerp Jesuit Church - Our Lady and Child Jesus with St. Rosalia, Peter and Paul (1629, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum), for the Dominican Church in Antwerp - Crucifixion with St. Dominic and St. Catherine of Siena (1629, Antwerp, Royal Museum fine arts). He creates many smaller paintings on religious themes: Vision of Our Lady to Blessed Hermann Joseph (1630, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum), Our Lady with Partridges (early 1630s, St. Petersburg, Hermitage), painted for the Queen of England.
Flemish school of painting. Religious and mythological subjects in the works of P. Rubens. Hymn to the wealth of nature and man - still lifes by Fr. Snyders. Ceremonial portrait in the painting of A. Van Dyck.
Flemish art of the 17th century
In the 17th century Dutch art was divided into two schools - Flemish and Dutch - due to the division of the Netherlands itself into two parts as a result of the revolution. In Flanders, the feudal nobility and higher burghers, as well as the Catholic Church, played main role in the life of the country and were the main customers of art. Scenes from the Holy Scriptures, ancient mythological scenes, portraits of eminent customers, hunting scenes, huge still lifes - the main genres of art in Flanders in the 17th century. It mixed features of both the Spanish and Italian Renaissance with the actual Dutch traditions. And as a result, Flemish Baroque art emerged, nationally cheerful, emotionally upbeat, materially sensual, lush in its abundant forms. Flemish Baroque showed little of itself in architecture.
The central figure of Flemish art of the 17th century. there was Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). The versatility of Rubens' talent and his amazing creative productivity make him similar to the masters of the Renaissance.
The artist, who in everyday consciousness is associated with the singer of almost pagan violence of the flesh, was one of the most intelligent and educated people of his time. In Italy he studied and fell in love with antiquity for the rest of his life.
The first major work in his homeland were altar images for the famous Antwerp Cathedral: “The Elevation of the Cross” (1610-1611) and “The Descent from the Cross” (1611-1614), in which Rubens created a classic type of altar image of the 17th century.
It combines monumentality (for this is painting that should express the mood large number people, some very important ideas that they understand) and decorativeness.
Rubens' art is a typical expression of the Baroque style, which finds its national characteristics. A huge life-affirming principle, the predominance of feeling over rationality are characteristic of even the most dramatic works of Rubens. They completely lack the mysticism and exaltation inherent in German and even Italian baroque. Rubens glorifies the national type of beauty. The Virgin Mary, like Magdalene, appears as a fair-haired, blue-eyed Brabant woman with curvaceous figures. Christ even on the cross looks like an athlete. Sebastian remains full of strength under a hail of arrows.
Rubens's paintings are full of violent movement. Usually, to enhance the dynamics, he resorts to a certain composition where the diagonal direction predominates. Bacchanalia, in which one can show the sweetness of intoxication, the hunt for lions, with their energy, swiftness and unbridled strength - everything that gives an occasion to express the joy of being, to sing a hymn to life, especially attracts the artist.
In 1623-1625. Rubens receives an order for a cycle of 21 paintings from the French queen Marie de' Medici, widow of Henry IV, to decorate the Luxembourg Palace. Scenes from the life of Marie de Medici cannot be called historical paintings in the full sense; in them, historical figures coexist with ancient deities, real events coexist with allegories.
In the Viennese portrait (“Fur Coat,” 1638), Elena Fourment, the artist’s wife, appears naked, standing on a red carpet, with a fur coat draped over her shoulders.
The portrait is built on the finest color nuances, on the contrast of thick brown fur with the velvety of the skin, hair lightly permeated with air, and the moisture of shining eyes. The woman’s body is painted with amazing realistic power, it seems that you feel the blood pulsating in your veins.
Into this last decade During his life, Rubens wrote more for himself, guided by his own choice of themes, but he also performed many works upon request. He paints portraits, this is a ceremonial baroque portrait, in which greatness is conveyed by the pose of the model, and the costume, and all sorts of accessories of the setting. In the last self-portrait (1638-1639)
Rubens, however, managed to show himself as a subtle psychologist.
Rubens also turns to the life of nature.
In the last decade, Rubens's painting skills have been distinguished by particular virtuosity and extreme breadth. The coloring becomes more monochrome, more generalized, the previous multicolor is lost (“Bathsheba”, 1635; “Consequences of War”, 1638).
The historical significance of Rubens is that he determined the development of the Flemish school, which had a huge influence on the subsequent development of Western European art.
The most famous of all Rubens' students, who studied with him for a short time, but soon became the first assistant in his workshop, was Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641). His portraits and self-portraits always emphasize the aristocracy of the model, her fragility and sophistication. In his work great place occupied by mythological and Christian subjects, which he interprets with characteristic lyricism or sadly elegiac. But van Dyck’s main genre is portraiture. In the first, Antwerp period (late 10s - early 20s), as this time of his work is called, he painted rich burghers or his fellow artists, writing in a strictly realistic manner, with subtle psychologism. But upon arrival in Italy, this type of portrait gives way to another. Van Dyck receives many orders and creates a ceremonial, representative portrait, in which, first of all, the class affiliation of the model is expressed. The artist leaves for England to serve King Charles I (1632). For England, van Dyck was the founder of a large school of portrait art, which reached an exceptional peak in the 18th century. But for the schools of the continent, van Dyck, as a master of ceremonial portraiture, was of great importance.
The follower and head of the Flemish school after the death of Rubens was Jacob Jordanes (1593-1678), the largest artist of Flanders in the 17th century. His favorite genre is everyday. This is the national "Bean King Festival".
The artist looked for his images in the peasant environment, in the popular crowd. In another common plot - “A satyr visiting a peasant”
(on the theme of Aesop's fable; versions of this picture are available in many European museums) the ancient legend acquires national Flemish features. Jordanes' painting is lush, free, plastically powerful, showing the artist's great decorative capabilities.
A special genre in Flemish art XVII V. there was a still life, the famous master of which was Frans Snyders (1579-1657). In his paintings, beautifully painted gifts of land and water lie in heaps on tables: fish, meat, fruit, killed game.
Genre painting is represented in the art of Flanders by the exceptionally gifted artist Adrian Brouwer (Brouwer, 1601-1638). Having lived in Holland for many years, Brouwer painted small paintings on everyday themes.