The art of Rubens is rooted in an era darkened by the long shadow of devastating wars between Protestants and Catholics. In the wake of this profound schism, the Catholic Church decided to cease using force to propagate the faith. Like Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) sought to persuade his spectators to return to the true faith through the beauty of his art. While Rubens is praised for the “baroque passion” in his depictions of cruelty and sensuous abandon, nowhere did he kindle such emotional fire as in his religious subjects. Their color, warmth, and majesty—but also their turmoil and lamentation—were calculated to arouse devout and ethical emotions. This fresh consideration of the images of saints and martyrs Rubens created for the churches of Flanders and the Holy Roman Empire offers a masterly demonstration of Rubens’s achievements, liberating their message from the secular misunderstandings of the postreligious age and showing them in their intended light.

The six glorious scenes that make up the Triumph of the Eucharist series by Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) are highlights of the Museo Nacional del Prado’s superb collection of Flemish paintings. Completed in 1626, these brilliantly detailed sketches were painted at the behest of the Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia in preparation for a series of monumental tapestries that are now considered among the finest made in Europe in the seventeenth century. Unfortunately, additions to the wooden supports, introduced after the paintings were created, made the panels considerably larger than Rubens intended and over time caused serious damage to the original sections. With the aid of the Getty Foundation’s Panel Paintings Initiative, the panels have been restored and returned to their original dimensions by the Prado, and the magnificent oil sketches can once again be placed on public view. This lushly illustrated and illuminating volume provides new insight into the history of the Eucharist series of paintings and tapestries and attests to Rubens’s exhilarating art. Spectacular Rubens is published on the occasion of an exhibition of the paintings, on view at the Museo Nacional del Prado from March 25 through June 29, 2014, and at the J. Paul Getty Museum from October 14, 2014, through January 4, 2015.

Figuring Faith and Female Power in the Art of Rubens argues that the Baroque painter, propagandist, and diplomat, Peter Paul Rubens, was not only aware of rapidly shifting religious and cultural attitudes toward women, but actively engaged in shaping them. Today, Rubens's paintings continue to be used -- and abused -- to prescribe and proscribe certain forms of femininity. Repositioning some of the artist's best-known works within seventeenth-century Catholic theology and female court culture, this book provides a feminist corrective to a body of art historical scholarship in which studies of gender and religion are often mutually exclusive. Moving chronologically through Rubens's lengthy career, the author shows that, in relation to the powerful women in his life, Rubens figured the female form as a transhistorical carrier of meaning whose devotional and rhetorical efficacy was heightened rather than diminished by notions of female difference and particularity.

The first study devoted to classical art’s vital creative impact on the work of the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens. For the great Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), the classical past afforded lifelong creative stimulus and the camaraderie of humanist friends. A formidable scholar, Rubens ingeniously transmitted the physical ideals of ancient sculptors, visualized the spectacle of imperial occasions, rendered the intricacies of mythological tales, and delineated the character of gods and heroes in his drawings, paintings, and designs for tapestries. His passion for antiquity profoundly informed every aspect of his art and life. Including 170 color illustrations, this volume addresses the creative impact of Rubens’s remarkable knowledge of the art and literature of antiquity through the consideration of key themes. The book’s lively interpretive essays explore the formal and thematic relationships between ancient sources and Baroque expressions: the significance of neo-Stoic philosophy, the compositional and iconographic inspiration provided by exquisite carved gems, Rubens’s study of Roman marble sculpture, and his inventive translation of ancient sources into new subjects made vivid by his dynamic painting style. This volume is published to accompany an exhibition on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa from November 10, 2021, to January 24, 2022.

This is a fascinating exploration of the mystery that surrounds of Ruben's most well-known and intriguing drawings. Peter Paul Rubens was one of the most talented and successful artists working in 17th-century Europe. During his illustrious career as a court painter and diplomat, Rubens expressed a fascination with exotic costumes and headdresses. With his masterful handling of black chalk and touches of red, Rubens executed a compelling drawing that features a figure wearing Asian costume - a depiction that has recently been identified as Man in Korean Costume. Despite the drawings renown - both during Ruben's own lifetime and in contemporary art scholarship - the reasons why it was made and whether it actually depicts a specific Asian person remain a mystery. The intriguing story that develops involves a shipwreck, an unusual hat, the earliest trade between Europe and Asia, the trafficking of Asian slave, and Jesuit missionaries.

The Catholic "thing" - the concrete historical reality of Catholicism as a presence in human history - is the richest cultural tradition in the world. It values both faith and reason, and therefore has a great deal to say about politics and economics, war and peace, manners and morals, children and families, careers and vocations, and many other perennial and contemporary questions. In addition, it has inspired some of the greatest art, music, and architecture, while offering unparalleled human solidarity to tens of millions through hospitals, soup kitchens, schools, universities, and relief services. This volume brings together some of the very best commentary on a wide range of recent events and controversies by some of the very best Catholic writers in the English language: Ralph McInerny, Michael Novak, Fr. James V. Schall, Hadley Arkes, Robert Royal, Anthony Esolen, Brad Miner, George Marlin, David Warren, Austin Ruse, Francis Beckwith, and many others. Their contributions cover large Catholic subjects such as philosophy and theology, liturgy and Church dogma, postmodern culture, the Church and modern politics, literature, and music. But they also look into specific contemporary problems such as religious liberty, the role of Catholic officials in public life, growing moral hazards in bio-medical advances, and such like. The Catholic Thing is a virtual encyclopedia of Catholic thought about modern life.

The Flemish baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens, born on June 28, 1577, died May 30, 1640 was the most renowned northern European artist of his day, and is now widely recognised as one of the foremost painters in Western art history. This title looks at his work.

"The Matter of Piety provides the first in-depth study of Zoutleeuw's exceptionally well-preserved pilgrimage church in a comparative perspective, and revaluates religious art and material culture in Netherlandish piety from the late Middle Ages through the crisis of iconoclasm and the Reformation to Catholic restoration. Analyzing the changing functions, outlooks, and meanings of devotional objects - monumental sacrament houses, cult statues and altarpieces, and small votive offerings or relics - Ruben Suykerbuyk revises dominant narratives about Catholic culture and patronage in the Low Countries. Rather than being a paralyzing force, the Reformation incited engaged counterinitiatives, and the vitality of late medieval devotion served as the fertile ground from which the Counter-Reformation organically grew under Protestant impulses"--

Of more than forty churches that fortified Antwerp as the bulwark of the Counter Reformation in the Netherlands, only St. Jacob’s stands now with its art and archives intact. Parish church of the city’s elite, it is filled with masterpieces, including the altarpiece that Rubens painted for his own burial chapel. Works of architecture, painting, sculpture, and hundreds of sacred objects, documented by the archives, enable a reconstruction of the integral role that art played in the transformation of a whole society over the span of two centuries, from 1585 to the 1790s. It is a history of real people and organizations, who used art for religion, politics, and social purpose, joined together in a church that embodied a diverse community.