Peter Paul Rubens

Peter Paul Rubens was born on 28 June 1577 in Siegen, where his Calvinist father Jan Rubens had fled from Antwerp to escape religious persecution.

After his father's death in 1587, Rubens moved with his mother to Antwerp, where he was raised Catholic and received a humanist education.

In 1598, after apprenticeships with Tobias Verhaecht, Adam van Noort, and Otto van Veen, Rubens became an independent master in the Antwerp painters' guild.

In 1600 Rubens went to Italy, entering the service of Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga of Mantua and studying the works of Titian, Michelangelo, and Caravaggio over eight years.

In September 1609 Rubens was named court painter to the Habsburg governors of the Southern Netherlands, with the privilege of keeping his studio in Antwerp.

On 3 October 1609 Rubens married Isabella Brant, daughter of a leading Antwerp citizen; she died in 1626, probably of plague.

Between about 1610 and 1614 Rubens created The Elevation of the Cross and The Descent from the Cross, monumental altarpieces that established him as the leading painter of Flanders.

In 1628-1630 Rubens undertook diplomatic missions to Madrid and London that helped negotiate peace between Spain and England; Charles I knighted him in 1630 and Philip IV of Spain conferred knighthood in 1631.

On 6 December 1630 the 53-year-old Rubens married the sixteen-year-old Hélène Fourment, who inspired many of his late paintings.

Rubens died of heart failure resulting from chronic gout on 30 May 1640 and was buried in Saint James' Church, Antwerp.