Peter Paul Rubens, born in 1577, was the most admired and productive Flemish and European artist of the 17th century. He was the master of an energetic Baroque style that expressed sumptuous subjects and colourful scenes. As a result of time spent in Venice working as a court painter to the duke of Mantua during the 1600s, he dedicated himself to studying ancient Roman art and works of the Italian masters, thus his style came to be heavily influenced by Titian.

In 1610 he moved to Antwerp, to a house he had designed himself called Rubenshuis. The house contained a workshop in which he and his apprentices created most of his life’s collection, and with altarpieces such as The Descent of the Cross (1611-14) for the Cathedral of Our Lady, he quickly established himself as the leading artist in Flanders. Several commissions followed from the French court, with the notable sequence of symbolic paintings depicting the life of Marie de’ Medici.

Following the death of his first wife in 1626, Rubens (aged 53) married his second wife, 16-year old Helene Fourment in 1930. As well as several portraits depicting her and their children, she also features in a number of works painted for the Spanish court, including The Garden of Love, The Three Graces and The Judgment of Paris. Many of the female characters in his paintings are voluptuous without being classed as fat, and it is through this categorisation that the term “Rubenesque” has been coined.

As well as portraits and self-portraits, Rubens paintings spanned religious and historical works as well as landscapes such as A Landscape with a Shepherd and his Flock. In addition, The Allegory of Peace and War was given to Charles I to aid a peace treaty between London and Madrid, so demonstrating Ruben’s concern for peace and political rest that helped make him so popular both as an artist and as a person.