Peter Paul Rubens

Rubens was multi-talented. He personified Baroque, with impressively large canvases, grand gestures and a great gift for pathos. Much of his oeuvre remains larger than life to this day. He was also capable of working in fine, exacting detail. The result is a breathtakingly expansive body of work, with paintings, drawings, book illustrations and even tapestries. The great master left behind approximately 2,500 compositions and 10,000 works of art. In the centuries since, many of these works have found their way to the world’s major museums. Still, his home base Antwerp is where you’ll get to know the master best of all.

After an instructive period in Italy, he returned to his birthplace. He then bought a house and transformed it into a city palace of his own. The artist and architect drew up the plans himself in the style of the Italian Renaissance. The result was a splendid palazzo, complete with artist’s studio, garden pavilion and sculpture museum.