Sensation & Sensuality. Rubens & his Legacy

Peter Paul Rubens is without doubt one of the most influential Masters that Flanders has ever seen. His work has inspired innumerable artists, including Rembrandt, Murillo, Delacroix, Renoirand Kokoschka. References to Rubens can even be found in the oeuvre of Pablo Picasso. Today, Rubens is known mostly as an artist who worked in the service of the Catholic Church and absolutist monarchs. Yet, there is also a less formal side to his oeuvre: Rubens was equally a painter of family portraits, landscapes and bucolic scenes, peasant dances and love gardens. This is the poetic Rubens who prepared the way for Rococo, Romanticism and even Impressionism; Rubens as a source of sensation and sensuality.

An international source of inspiration
Over the centuries, Rubens has been admired and even envied for his great sense of colour and composition as well as his painterly technique. His work has been a rich source of inspiration to many a talented artist. French painters such as Cézanne and Delacroix were attracted primarily by the erotic and poetic qualities of Rubens’ work, whereas German and Swiss artists like  Corinth andBöcklin were drawn mainly by its vitality. The religious aspect appealed mostly to his Spanish followers, while English artists Constable and Reynolds found inspiration in his portraits and landscapes. 

This exhibition, entitled Sensation and Sensuality, explores the artistic legacy of Peter Paul Rubens in six thematic chapters: violence, power, lust, compassion, elegance and poetry. In each of these chapters, curator Nico Van Hout sets out in search of connections between Rubens and a variety of subsequent artists. The exhibition showcases over 160 pieces, including exceptional loans from Prado (Madrid), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the National Gallery (Washington), Neue Pinakothek (Munich) and Nasjonalgalleriet (Oslo). In addition to paintings and drawings by Rubens and his followers, it features examples of prints that helped popularise the oeuvre of the Master from Antwerp across the globe.