Rubens and Women

 

This marvellous exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery has one theme, and succeeds brilliantly in conveying that them. Rubens, although classically trained in the classical idiom (from several years in Rome), created his best works from life studies of the female nude, specifically, of his second wife, Helene Fourment. 

The evidence for this is carefully marshalled, but is most visible in some of the  small-scale drawings in the show, which are compared to a life-size classical sculpture, a Crouching Venus, from the second century CE.

The Crouching Venus clearly served as a reference for many works by the painter – you can see more than one example in the exhibition of the same pose. For example, here is a drawing of Venus nursing Cupids, from 1616:

Yet there is one major difference between the two female bodies. It is clear by comparing these two works that, while Rubens used classical poses as a model, he tempered his classical style by reference to the human body. The key difference is that the Crouching Venus has no folds of flesh; this is an idealised nude, with a kind of abstracted body and face. Helpfully, if perhaps a little voyeuristically, the exhibition provides two mirrors so you can observe the Crouching Venus from more than one angle. In contrast, what brings the Rubens drawing to life is the sense of immediacy, of actuality, despite the pose being classical and the woman’s body conforming more to the classical shape than the present-day ideal. 

There are several examples in the exhibition of this unique synthesis of classical and observation. So vivid is the observation that at times the ostensible subject is entirely lost in the figure being painted, as in the Hagar in the Desert, featuring what appears to be a portrait of Helene Fourment in a stunning blue dress. There is not the slightest sign of her being uncomfortable in her desert surroundings: she looks to be on an outing in her Sunday best:

An even more extreme example of the conflict between subject and model is a crazy depiction of Judith with the head of Holofernes, from 1616 (not in the exhibition, but in the catalogue). Judith looks so fetching, and so pleased with herself, you have to look twice to notice she is holding the head she has just chopped off.

Of course, it is well known that Rubens was a sensual painter – you half expected the famous portrait of Helene Fourment wearing nothing but a fur coat, but the exhibition theme was clearly established without this painting. What is conveyed here is that even in the religious works, there is a sense of life, of the characters jumping out from the picture, to engage with you. 

To conclude, there are two examples of just how skilled Rubens was as a painter. One is a copy by Rubens of the figure of Night by Michelangelo. 

Of course, in the classical tradition of art, painters learned by copying, but it seems very unlikely this Michelangelo was modelled from life. If Michelangelo used a model at all, it looks like he used a male model, and added token breasts to it. Rubens could paint women, but clearly Michelangelo could not (at least, not without looking at them). 

The final indicator of Rubens’ talent came unexpectedly after leaving the exhibition. In the permanent collection at Dulwich, there is a full-size Gainsborough portrait of two young women, that will be a shock for any visitor walking out of the Rubens exhibition: 

Don’t believe that it was the French 19th-century that put an end to the classical depiction of the human form. Here, with Gainsborough, you can see how we have lost the classical tradition. Here is the full horror of the insipid modern body: bodies with no limbs, no curves. So lacking in any substance are the women that it looks like the sheet music one of the women is holding is likely to slip off at any moment; there is nothing to hold it up. Give me the classical yet living world of Rubens any day.