Rubens Unveiled

The virtuosity of Rubens’s art speaks to the imagination. Precisely how he went about his craft, how he created his paintings, and what process he followed from sketch to finished work is explored in Rubens Unveiled. The reader gets to peek over the master’s shoulder, to discover how he made his first quick drawing, oil sketches and model studies, before laying down his paint across sometimes immense canvases, either in a succession of numerous transparent layers, or directly in colourful brushstrokes. Rubens employed assistants to execute certain parts of his work, he negotiated on price and he carefully oversaw the transportation of his paintings. The book looks at all these elements, while providing plenty of opportunity for the painter and his contemporaries to speak in their own words. In this way, we get to follow the genesis of a Rubens painting at first hand.