Peter Paul Rubens
On this day in 1577, Peter Paul Rubens, a diplomat and one of the most influential artists of the Flemish Baroque, was born. His characteristic Baroque style underlined movement, color, and sensuality, following the immediate, dramatic artistic style promoted in the Counter-Reformation. Rubens was a painter who produced altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects.
Today's painting captures a deeply emotional moment: the tragic farewell between Venus and Adonis. Though Venus and Amor are fully aware that Adonis is doomed to die at the tusks of a wild boar, neither can dissuade him from setting off on his fatal hunt. Rubens likely encountered this variation of the myth—evocative of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, though not directly told there—through the works of Titian and Cambiaso during his time in Italy.
The composition’s drama is heightened by Adonis’s diagonal pose, which not only displays his heroic physique but also visually conveys the internal struggle between desire and duty, between staying and leaving. The posture evokes a mirror image of the classical Laocoön sculpture, connecting Rubens’s emotional intensity with classical forms.
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P.P.S. The artist we're featuring today was one the most iconic Baroque painters. Here's Rubens in 10 masterpieces! This selection will help you learn more about this amazing painter.