Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Peter Paul Rubens
Flemish; 17th-century
Vienna, Austria: Kunsthistorisches Museum
78%
The Feast of Venus. c1636. Oil on canvas
As often happens with Rubens, it seems his virtuosity has here gotten in the way of good design. But look at almost any individual tableau within this whole baggy scene, and notice how set it is in all its relations. Up in the trees, that fifth cherub from the right bends its body to continue the arabesque set off by the reaching woman just below; the carousing girls and satyrs at left vibrate in response to the way the circle of putti to their right lurches towards them. Perhaps things in this painting are balanced, if bloated. Then again, keep looking. You'll come upon passages that don't resolve into the noise around them, places on the canvas that appear to have been left out of the theatrics completely: that block of red sky left of center that's grading up to blue, for instance; the kissing cupids at bottom right. Since the thick action of this painting is little but a pretense for Rubens to indulge in careening colors and wild contrast, such lapses in the scene's logic are almost forgivable. But a perfect painting wouldn't compromise itself as much as this one does. (TFS, 2025)
Atlanta, GA: High Museum of Art
63%
Holy Family with a Garland of Flowers. c1620. Oil on panel (with Workshop and Jan Brueghel the Elder)
The collaborative element (this is one of many JB/PPR dual canvases) makes this, ultimately, a metapainting — it's a trompe l'oeil painting of a framed and garlanded painting. This means that the reasons we typically appreciate Rubens (the freeness of his hand, his roving color, the buxom nature of his compositions) are all attenuated, and subordinated to the piece's conceptual aims. This isn't the worst thing, as the sort of one-note reflections on the fiction of painting that trompe-l'oeil stimulates serves, here and there, to make us better notice this painting as a painting. The conceit that the flowers are "real" but the family scene an "illusion" tinges the way we notice chromatic affinities between these two components of the total painting; the octagonal shape of the painted internal frame around Rubens's contribution enhances the energy produced by the network of cast glances. But these are small painterly potatoes when it comes to an artist of Rubens's caliber. (Brueghel's a minor painter and can't be blamed for what are ultimately trifles, if interesting ones.) (TFS, 2025)