Showing posts with label Peter Paul Rubens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peter Paul Rubens. Show all posts

Jan Brueghel & Peter Paul Rubens - The Garden of Eden [c.1615]


Research has shown that it was Breughel who began sketching the outlines of the composition on the panel, but that it was Rubens who put the first scenes into paint: Adam and Eve, but also a part of the tree and the horse beside them. When this was done, Brueghel added the sky, the landscape and filled the rest of the painting with animals and plants. The painting captures the moment right before Adam eats from the fatal apple that Eve is handing him, which would result in their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Rubens and Breughel show us an ideal world where everything is in perfect harmony. Nothing in this peaceful setting seems to indicate the approaching doom.

[Oil on panel, 74.3 x 114.7 cm]
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Peter Paul Rubens & Jan Breughel the Elder - The Feast of Acheloüs [c.1615]


This large panel of about 1615 is one of the most impressive known collaborations between Rubens and his older colleague, Jan Brueghel. Rubens conceived and painted the figure group; throughout the rest of the picture Brueghel was in his two elements of landscape and still life painting. A "cabinet picture" like this one would have been made for a collector who could appreciate clever invention, fine execution, the quotations of classical sculpture in the nearest figures at the table, and Rubens's retelling of the tale found in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Theseus (in red) and his companions were returning from Crete to Athens when they encountered the River Achelous. The river-god himself sets a banquet before them and explains that a distant island is his lost lover Perimele, held forever in his embrace. Except for young and "reckless" Pirithous, the story of the miracle "moved the hearts of all."

[Oil on wood, 108 x 163.8 cm]
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