Rubens THE POWER OF TRANSFORMATION
Venus Frigida, 1614, Peter Paul Rubens, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp © www.lukasweb.be – Art in Flanders vzw, photo Hugo Maertens
This special exhibition invites visitors to see these and other masterpieces now in Vienna in the context of Rubens’ preparatory drawings, oil sketches, panel paintings, and canvases.
The works on show – among them around seventy loans from the world’s foremost collections such as the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Prado in Madrid or the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. – have been carefully selected to create juxtapositions and confrontations that document how Rubens worked, how he created his vivid, carefully contrived artworks.
The show thus focuses on the most fascinating aspect of Rubens’ art: his critical analysis and use of external sources and ideas. With the help of selected examples the exhibition illustrates how Rubens was inspired by other artists, by both contemporary and Renaissance compositions. Throughout his life he also entered into a creative dialogue with ancient and Renaissance sculpture.
Exhibition VideoTrailer