International diplomat, savvy businessman, devout Catholic, fluent in six languages, an intellectual who counted Europe’s finest scholars among his friends, Peter Paul Rubens were always first a painter. Few artists have been capable of transforming such a vast variety of influences into a style utterly new and original. From his workshop, with its many assistants, came quantities of book illustrations, tapestry designs, festival decorations, and paintings on every subject, which his engravers reproduced. He maintained control of the quality, while charging patrons according to the extent of his involvement on a picture. Frans Snyders, Jacob Jordaens, and Anthony van Dyck each assisted him. Rubens’s impact was immediate, international, and long lasting. The works of Thomas Gainsborough and Eugene Delacroix, among others, testify to his posthumous influence.
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