Antwerp Home of a Baroque Master Artist - Rubenshuis

Antwerp was added as a destination on our Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, road-trip for two reasons.  Firstly, we hadn’t had time to go there during our Belgium trip a couple years earlier and most importantly, I absolutely had to make a pilgrimage to "Rubenshuis", the house of the great painting master, Peter Paul Rubens (1577 - 1630)

Peter Paul Rubens was actually born in the German city of Siegen, Westphalia to Jan Rubens and Maria Pypelincks. His father was a Calvinist, so after increased religious turmoil and persecution of Protestants in the Spanish Netherlands, he and Rubens’ mother fled Antwerp for Cologne in 1568.

Jan Rubens became the legal advisor (and lover) of Anna of Saxony, the second wife of William I of Orange, and served at her court in Siegen in 1570.  Needless to say, the affair was discovered and Rubens’ father was imprisoned for a time.

Anna of Saxony
photo above by Abraham de Bruyn (worldroots.com) courtesy of Wikimedia

Peter Paul Rubens was born in 1577 and the family returned to Cologne the next year.  Jan Rubens died ten years later and in 1589, Rubens moved with his mother, back to Antwerp and was raised as a Catholic.  Religion figured prominently in much of Rubens’ work and he later became one of the leading voices of the Catholic Counter-Reformation style of painting. 

In Antwerp, Rubens received a humanist education, studying Latin and classical literature and at fourteen began his artistic apprenticeship.  When he completed his education in 1598, he entered the Guild of St. Luke as an independent master.   Two years later, he headed off to Italy where he could study the art of the Italian Masters, particularly Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci.  He also carefully studied works by Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto and Caravaggio while he was very successful painting important personal and religious portraits of wealthy prominent people.   

Rubens returned to Antwerp in 1608.  His return coincided with a period of renewed prosperity in the city with the signing of the Treaty of Antwerp in April 1609.  Rubens also married Isabella Brant and started a family.

The Honeysuckle Bower (Alte Pinakothek, Munich)
photo by The Yorck Project, Direct Media Publ. courtesy of Wikimedia

In September 1609 Rubens was appointed as court painter to Albert VII, Archduke of Austria and Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain.  He received special permission to base his studio in Antwerp instead of at their court in Brussels.  He was also allowed to work for other clients. As his painting style matured, he painted magnificent mythological, allegorical tableaux and religious altarpieces that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality and sometimes used such perspective that the scene seemed about to tumble out of the canvas at times. 

photos above courtesy of Wikimedia
top left to right Descent From The Cross (Hermitage Museum) & The Fall of Phaeton (Nat Gallery of Art Washington D.C.)     bottom left to right Family of Jan Brueghel the Elder (Courtauld Institute of Art) & The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus (Alte Pinakothek Munich)

Thanks to Rubens and his circle, Antwerp again became a cultural center.  During a time when painter and sculptors were still frequently seen as craftsmen and artisans, Rubens was the epitome of a gentleman-painter.  He was wealthy, celebrated and often traveled on diplomatic missions to the royal courts of Europe.

In 1610, Rubens bought a house which he remodeled into a magnificent, Italian-style mansion.   The artist lived with his wife and children, and worked in the house for almost 30 years. 

He hosted royalty and the luminaries of the day at his home and worked, along with his apprentices; in his large light-filled studio to create his extravagant Baroque works. He also had an impressive personal art gallery and library, where he collected his favorite works.

As with many historic homes, the Rubens house went through many changes and experienced quite a bit of destruction during its long existence.  The house has been carefully restored to what historians and restoration experts believe is a close approximation to how it would have appeared when Rubens lived and worked in the home.  The present layout is based on a floor plan drawn from memory by an eighteenth-century visitor.

No one has ever been able to locate the inventory from the time of Rubens’ death, so the interior décor and personal items are those that would have been in the home of a wealthy family from the period when Rubens would have occupied the residence.

Only two parts of Rubens original design and construction for his house survive substantially intact; the screen and triumphal arch which forms the passageway from the house to the garden, and the garden pavilion. 

This is the “Rubenshuis” house museum you can visit today and we loved every minute of the visit!