Travel Belgium About Brussels Upper Town Musees Royaux Des Beaux Arts Rubens And His Contemporaries
Apprenticed in Antwerp, Rubens (1577-1640) spent eight years in Italy studying the Renaissance masters before returning home, where he quickly completed a stunning series of paintings for Antwerp Cathedral. His fame spread far and wide and for the rest of his days Rubens was inundated with work, receiving commissions from all over Europe. In
Room 52 , the popular misconception that Rubens painted nothing but chubby nude women and muscular men is dispelled with a sequence of fine portraits, each aristocratic head drawn with great care and attention to detail - in particular, note the exquisite ruffs adorning the Archduke Albert and
Isabella. Studies of a Negro's Head is likewise wonderfully observed, a preparation for the black magus in the
Adoration of the Magi , a luminous work that's one of several huge canvases next door in Room 62 . Here you'll also find the Ascent to Calvary , an intensely physical painting, capturing the confusion, agony and strain as Christ struggles on hands and knees under the weight of the cross. There's also the bloodcurdling
Martyrdom of St Lieven , whose cruel torture - his tongue has just been ripped out and fed to a dog - is watched from on high by cherubs and angels.
Two of Rubens' pupils, Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) and Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), also feature in this part of the museum, with the studied portraits of the former dotted along the length of
Room 53 and the big and brassy canvases of Jordaens dominating Room 57 . Like Rubens, Jordaens had a bulging order-book and for years he and his apprentices churned out paintings by the cartload. His best work is generally agreed to have been completed early on - between about 1620 and 1640 - and there's evidence here in the two versions of the Satyr and the Peasant , the earlier work clever and inventive, the second a hastily cobbled together piece that verges on buffoonery.
Close by, in Room 60 , is a modest sample of Dutch painting, including a couple of sombre and carefully composed Rembrandts (1606-69). One of them - the self-assured
Portrait of Nicolaas van Bambeeck - was completed in 1641, when the artist was finishing off his famous Night Watch , now exhibited in Amsterdam's
Rijksmuseum. Rembt . randt's pupils are displayed in the same room, principally Nicolaes Maes (1634-93), who is well represented by the delicate
Dreaming Old Woman . There are also several canvases by Rembrandt's talented contemporary, Frans Hals (1580-1666), notably his charming
Three Children and a Cart drawn by a Goa
