A go to to Rubens’ workshop: the workshop the place the most effective baroque blockbusters have been painted | Culture | EUROtoday

In the up to date world, mass manufacturing of artworks designed to dominate the market is assumed. Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons or earlier than that Andy Warhol could be good examples of this manner of mass manufacturing. In these circumstances, it’s the model that determines costs and success. But these well-known celebrities are usually not the inventors of mass manufacturing. In a protracted journey to the previous, a number of names may very well be investigated among the many elite of historic masters (Rafael, Guido Reni, Luca Giordano), however Pedro Pablo Rubens (Siegen, 1577-Antwerp, 1640) stands out above all of them. Known because the prince of painters, Rubens was additionally probably the most profitable and prolific. Around 2,000 works are attributed to him and his workshop (they have been additionally referred to as portray workshops), 100 of that are in Madrid.

The Prado Museum opens an exhibition wherein it particulars how Rubens painted and explains how European painters labored in workshops and used a number of collaborators. The exhibition, curated by Alejandro Vergara, will stay open in room 16 B of the Villanueva constructing from this Tuesday till February 16. The exhibition is made up of greater than 30 works that embody work made by the grasp, others painted by his assistants and others wherein specialists can decide the diploma of contribution between the artist and his collaborators.

The central a part of the room revives what the workshop might have been. The director of the museum, Miguel Falomir, acknowledges that there could also be a variety of fantasy within the recreation, however that every thing is believable as a result of they’ve checked out work wherein Rubens’ workshop was reproduced. The utensils, supplies, furnishings and different objects attribute of the painter’s occupation (brushes, palettes, materials, boards, easels, tientos) are combined collectively to present an thought of ​​nice exercise. On a chair, there’s a defining contact of the character of the elegant and engaging Rubens: a sword and a black hat dyed with logwood, a dye initially from Mexico that at the moment was an indication of most exquisiteness. The hat was made by milliner Ana Lamata, impressed by her portraits.

A really cultured and cosmopolitan man (he spoke 5 languages), Rubens lived for a very long time in Italy and obtained commissions from the courts of Spain, France and England. But his workshop was at all times in Antwerp, as was his true dwelling, a home that he remodeled into an Italian palace and which might presently be visited by vacationers. In the workshop, says Alejandro Vergara, round 25 folks might come collectively. Each one in every of them with a unique occupation. Given the massive quantity of commissions, painters concurrently labored on a number of works on the identical time.

Having seen the essence of what the workshop might have been, the work hanging on the partitions have been chosen to interrupt down Rubens’ approach of portray and provides an thought of ​​the magnitude of his commissions. In an article devoted to the artist, the author Antonio Muñoz Molina outlined him on this newspaper as a Spielberg of the visible super-productions of the Baroque, a Cecil B. DeMille of the bellicose Catholicism of the Counter-Reformation. “His plastic imagination,” added the author, “and his technical skill are combined with the organizational and executive qualities of a director in the era of the big studios. As in the case of many of them, the splendor of their creations also has something excessive and impersonal, a suspicion of rhetorical emptiness, of large-scale manufacturing.

How did you choose the members of your team? The artist Jacobo Alcalde Gibert tells it in a six-minute video that is projected on the side of the room. There the viewer learns that the workshops were the spaces where the painters carried out their craft. They were not a school. Rubens chose the artists by specialty, depending on the issue that took precedence over the current commission. They could be fruits, fabrics, seascapes or any other motif. In addition to specialization, Rubens always wanted to have a great teacher. The most famous case is that of Anton van Dyck, with whom he collaborated on many of his works.

Alejandro Vergara shows several batches of unfinished paintings, such as portraits of Hélène Fourment with her children and María de Medici, to explain the basic process of making the work. “The procedure was slow. Progress was made little by little, in different layers: the drawing was applied on the primer; on this, the sketch and, on the sketch, the color in more or less transparent layers.” Each portray might take about 60 days of collective work.

According to Vergara, there is no such thing as a doubt amongst specialists concerning the work that have been painted solely by Rubens, which of them he actively participated in, or which of them he gave a couple of touch-ups to. All the sketches of the works have been his. These sketches are those he offered to the shopper and are additionally those that allowed him to set the costs. If the shopper required extra intervention from the artist, he would deal with the ultimate texture of the portray. The extra hand the artist had, the extra the quantity to be paid elevated. “If I had painted the painting without help, it would have cost twice as much,” the artist himself wrote.

There are additionally no doubts concerning the copies coming from the workshop or from his personal hand. In entrance of two portraits of Anne of Austria, Vergara affirms that Rubens’ authorship is seen within the hesitations of the portray hand: “In the workshop copy there is no hesitancy. The natural thing for an artist is that his hand trembles.”