1.
Carlo Maratta
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Carlo Maratta or Maratti was an Italian painter, active mostly in Rome, and known principally for his classicizing paintings executed in a Late Baroque Classical manner. Although he is part of the classical tradition stemming from Raphael, he was not exempt from the influence of Baroque painting and his contemporary and friend, Giovanni Bellori, wrote an early biography on Maratta. Born in Camerano, then part of the Papal States, he went to Rome in 1636, accompanied by, Don Corintio Benicampi and he became an apprentice in the studio of Andrea Sacchi. It was at time that the debate between Sacchi and Pietro da Cortona took place at the Accademia di San Luca, the artists academy in Rome. Sacchi argued that paintings should only have a few figures which should express the narrative whereas Cortona countered that a number of figures allowed for the development of sub themes. Marattas painting at this time was allied with the classicism of Sacchi and was far more restrained and composed than the Baroque exuberance of Pietro da Cortona’s paintings. Like Sacchi, his paintings were inspired by the works of the painters from Parma and Bologna, Annibale Carracci, Guercino, Guido Reni. He developed a relationship with Sacchi till the death of his master in 1661. Another major work from this period was The Mystery of the Trinity Revealed to St. Augustine painted for the church of Santa Maria dei Sette Dolori and his pictures of the late 1650s exhibit light and movement derived from Roman Baroque painting, combined with classical idealism. In 1664, Maratta became the director of the Accademia di San Luca and, concerned with elevating the status of artists, promoted the study and drawing of the art of Classical Antiquity. During the 1670s he was commissioned by Pope Clement X to fresco the ceiling of the salone in the Palazzo Altieri and his major works of this period included, The Appearance of the Virgin to St. Other works included an altarpiece, ‘The Death of St Francis Xavier’ in the San Francesco Xavier Chapel in the transept of the Church of the Gesu. Maratta was a portrait painter. He painted Sacchi, Cardinal Antonio Barberini, Pope Clement IX and he also painted numerous English sitters during their visits to Rome on the Grand Tour, having sketched antiquities for John Evelyn as early as 1645. In 1679 or 1680, a daughter, Faustina, was born to Maratta by his mistress and he legally recognized her as his daughter in 1698 and upon becoming a widower in 1700, Maratta married the girls mother. His daughter’s features were incorporated into a number of Maratta’s late paintings, in 1704 Maratta was knighted by Pope Clement XI. His sculptural designs included figures of the Apostles for San Giovanni in Laterano and he continued to run his studio into old age even when he could no longer paint. Maratta died in 1713 in Rome, and was buried there in Santa Maria degli Angeli, list of Carlo Maratta pupils and assistants Birth of the Virgin, 1643–45, Church of Saint Clare, Nocera Umbra
2.
Giorgio Vasari
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Vasari was born in Arezzo, Tuscany. Recommended at an age by his cousin Luca Signorelli, he became a pupil of Guglielmo da Marsiglia. He was befriended by Michelangelo whose painting style would influence his own, in 1529, he visited Rome where he studied the works of Raphael and other artists of the Roman High Renaissance. Vasaris own Mannerist paintings were admired in his lifetime than afterwards. In 1547 he completed the hall of the chancery in Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome with frescoes that received the name Sala dei Cento Giorni and he was consistently employed by members of the Medici family in Florence and Rome, and worked in Naples, Arezzo and other places. He also helped to organize the decoration of the Studiolo, now reassembled in the Palazzo Vecchio, aside from his career as a painter, Vasari was also successful as an architect. In Florence, Vasari also built the long passage, now called Vasari Corridor, the enclosed corridor passes alongside the River Arno on an arcade, crosses the Ponte Vecchio and winds around the exterior of several buildings. He also renovated the medieval churches of Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce, at both he removed the original rood screen and loft, and remodelled the retro-choirs in the Mannerist taste of his time. In Santa Croce, he was responsible for the painting of The Adoration of the Magi which was commissioned by Pope Pius V in 1566 and it was recently restored, before being put on exhibition in 2011 in Rome and in Naples. Eventually it is planned to return it to the church of Santa Croce in Bosco Marengo, in 1562 Vasari built the octagonal dome on the Basilica of Our Lady of Humility in Pistoia, an important example of high Renaissance architecture. In Rome, Vasari worked with Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola and Bartolomeo Ammanati at Pope Julius IIIs Villa Giulia, the Lives also included a novel treatise on the technical methods employed in the arts. The book was rewritten and enlarged in 1568, with the addition of woodcut portraits of artists. The work has a consistent and notorious bias in favour of Florentines, and tends to attribute to them all the developments in Renaissance art – for example, Venetian art in particular, is systematically ignored in the first edition. Between the first and second editions, Vasari visited Venice and while the edition gave more attention to Venetian art. Vasaris biographies are interspersed with amusing gossip, with a few exceptions, however, Vasaris aesthetic judgement was acute and unbiased. He did not research archives for exact dates, as art historians do, and naturally his biographies are most dependable for the painters of his own generation. Modern criticism – with new materials opened up by research – has corrected many of his traditional dates and attributions. Vasari includes a sketch of his own biography at the end of the Lives, according to the historian Richard Goldthwaite, Vasari was one of the earliest authors to use the term competition in its economic sense
3.
Baroque
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The style began around 1600 in Rome and Italy, and spread to most of Europe. The aristocracy viewed the dramatic style of Baroque art and architecture as a means of impressing visitors by projecting triumph, power, Baroque palaces are built around an entrance of courts, grand staircases, and reception rooms of sequentially increasing opulence. However, baroque has a resonance and application that extend beyond a reduction to either a style or period. It is also yields the Italian barocco and modern Spanish barroco, German Barock, Dutch Barok, others derive it from the mnemonic term Baroco, a supposedly laboured form of syllogism in logical Scholastica. The Latin root can be found in bis-roca, in informal usage, the word baroque can simply mean that something is elaborate, with many details, without reference to the Baroque styles of the 17th and 18th centuries. The word Baroque, like most periodic or stylistic designations, was invented by later critics rather than practitioners of the arts in the 17th, the term Baroque was initially used in a derogatory sense, to underline the excesses of its emphasis. In particular, the term was used to describe its eccentric redundancy and noisy abundance of details, although it was long thought that the word as a critical term was first applied to architecture, in fact it appears earlier in reference to music. Another hypothesis says that the word comes from precursors of the style, Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola and he did not make the distinctions between Mannerism and Baroque that modern writers do, and he ignored the later phase, the academic Baroque that lasted into the 18th century. Long despised, Baroque art and architecture became fashionable between the two World Wars, and has remained in critical favour. In painting the gradual rise in popular esteem of Caravaggio has been the best barometer of modern taste, William Watson describes a late phase of Shang-dynasty Chinese ritual bronzes of the 11th century BC as baroque. The term Baroque may still be used, usually pejoratively, describing works of art, craft, the appeal of Baroque style turned consciously from the witty, intellectual qualities of 16th-century Mannerist art to a visceral appeal aimed at the senses. It employed an iconography that was direct, simple, obvious, germinal ideas of the Baroque can also be found in the work of Michelangelo. Even more generalised parallels perceived by some experts in philosophy, prose style, see the Neapolitan palace of Caserta, a Baroque palace whose construction began in 1752. In paintings Baroque gestures are broader than Mannerist gestures, less ambiguous, less arcane and mysterious, more like the stage gestures of opera, Baroque poses depend on contrapposto, the tension within the figures that move the planes of shoulders and hips in counterdirections. Baroque is a style of unity imposed upon rich, heavy detail, Baroque style featured exaggerated lighting, intense emotions, release from restraint, and even a kind of artistic sensationalism. There were highly diverse strands of Italian baroque painting, from Caravaggio to Cortona, the most prominent Spanish painter of the Baroque was Diego Velázquez. The later Baroque style gradually gave way to a more decorative Rococo, while the Baroque nature of Rembrandts art is clear, the label is less often used for Vermeer and many other Dutch artists. Flemish Baroque painting shared a part in this trend, while continuing to produce the traditional categories
4.
Antiquarian
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An antiquarian or antiquary is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with attention to ancient artifacts, archaeological and historic sites, or historic archives. Today the term is used in a pejorative sense, to refer to an excessively narrow focus on factual historical trivia. The Kaogutu or Illustrated Catalogue of Examined Antiquity compiled by Lü Dalin is one of the oldest known catalogues to systematically describe and classify ancient artifacts which were unearthed. Interests in antiquarian studies of ancient inscriptions and artifacts waned after the Song Dynasty, Books on antiquarian topics covered such subjects as the origin of customs, religious rituals, and political institutions, genealogy, topography and landmarks, and etymology. By contrast, antiquarian works as a form are organized by topic. Major antiquarian Latin writers with surviving works include Varro, Pliny the Elder, Aulus Gellius, the Roman emperor Claudius published antiquarian works, none of which is extant. Some of Ciceros treatises, particularly his work on divination, show strong antiquarian interests, roman-era Greek writers also dealt with antiquarian material, such as Plutarch in his Roman Questions and the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus. The aim of Latin antiquarian works is to collect a number of possible explanations. The antiquarians are often used as sources by the ancient historians, despite the importance of antiquarian writing in the literature of ancient Rome, some scholars view antiquarianism as emerging only in the Middle Ages. Antiquarianisms wider flowering is more associated with the Renaissance, and with the critical assessment. The development of genealogy as a scientific discipline went hand-in-hand with the development of antiquarianism, genealogical antiquaries recognised the evidential value for their researches of non-textual sources, including seals and church monuments. Many early modern antiquaries were also chorographers, that is to say, they recorded landscapes, in England, some of the most important of these took the form of county histories. They increasingly argued that empirical evidence could be used to refine. Antiquaries had always attracted a degree of ridicule, and since the century the term has tended to be used most commonly in negative or derogatory contexts. Nevertheless, many practising antiquaries continue to claim the title with pride, Antiquary was the usual term in English from the 16th to the mid-18th centuries to describe a person interested in antiquities. From the second half of the 18th century, however, antiquarian began to be used widely as a noun. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, a distinction was perceived to exist between the interests and activities of the antiquary and the historian
5.
Domenichino
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Domenico Zampieri, known as Domenichino for his shortness, was an Italian Baroque painter of the Bolognese or Carracci School of painters. Domenichino was born in Bologna, son of a shoemaker, and he left Bologna for Rome in 1602 and became one of the most talented apprentices to emerge from Annibale Carraccis supervision. As a young artist in Rome he lived with his slightly older Bolognese colleagues Albani and Guido Reni, and worked alongside Lanfranco, meanwhile, he had completed frescoes c. Following Annibale Carraccis death in 1609, Annibales Bolognese pupils, foremost Domenichino, Albani, Reni and Lanfranco, became the leading painters in Rome. One of Domenichinos masterpieces, his frescoes of Scenes of the Life of Saint Cecilia in the Polet Chapel of San Luigi dei Francesi, was commissioned in 1612 and completed in 1615. Concurrently he painted his first, and most celebrated, altarpiece and it subsequently would be judged as being comparable to Raphaels great Transfiguration and even as the best picture in the world. With the election of a Bolognese pope in 1621, Domenichino returned to Rome, appointed Papal Architect, he nonetheless continued to be most active as a painter, obtaining many commissions for altarpieces in Roman churches. His Scenes from the Life of San Gennaro occupied him for the rest of his life and he painted four large lunettes, four pendentives, and twelve scenes in the soffits of the arches, all in fresco, plus three large altarpieces in oil on copper. He died, perhaps by poison at the hands of the jealous Cabal of Naples, before completing the fourth altarpiece or the cupola, at the time of his death, Domenichinos chief assistant was an obscure painter from Assisi, Francesco Raspantino, who inherited his masters studio. Earlier, Domenichinos principal pupils were Alessandro Fortuna, Giovanni Battista Ruggieri, Antonio Alberti called Barbalonga, Francesco Cozza, Andrea Camassei, others who studied in his studio include Poussin, Pietro Testa, and his future biographer, Giovanni Pietro Bellori. The portrait of Agucchi in York used to be attributed to Domenichino, Imitation in this sense is not copying but a creative process inspired by rhetorical theory whereby revered models are not only emulated but surpassed. Jerome from an altarpiece of the subject in Bologna by his former teacher. Like Domenichinos paintings, its sources were in ancient models and aimed at clarity of expression capable of moving its audience, as the Florentine composer Giulio Caccini held and Domenichino surely believed, the aim of the composer/artist was to move the passion of the mind. To achieve that goal, Domenichino paid particular attention to expressive gestures, Domenichinos composite score of 58 nonetheless was surpassed only by Raphael and Rubens, and it equalled that of the Carracci. The Balance reflects Domenichinos high standing in the history of European taste— until John Ruskin in the 1840s wrote his devastating attacks on Bolognese Baroque painting in his Modern Painters, the Carracci and their followers were condemned by Ruskin as being insincere. For Ruskin, there was no entirely sincere nor any great art from the seventeenth century, in 1996 the first major exhibition of his work was held at the Palazzo Venezia in Rome. 1620, Royal Collection, Hampton Court Madonna of Loreto with Saints John the Baptist, Paterniano, 1618–19, North Carolina Museum of Art) Rinaldo and Armida, c. 1620–21, Louvre, Paris Martyrdom of St Peter Martyr, c, 1622-23, Louvre, Paris Saint Ignatius de Loyola’s Vision of Christ and God the Father, c
6.
Christina, Queen of Sweden
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Christina reigned as Queen of Sweden from 1632 to 1654. She was the surviving legitimate child of King Gustav II Adolph. At the age of six, Christina succeeded her father on the throne upon his death at the Battle of Lützen, Christina is remembered as one of the most educated women of the 1600s. She was fond of books, manuscripts, paintings, and sculptures, with her interest in religion, philosophy, mathematics and alchemy, she attracted many scientists to Stockholm, wanting the city to become the Athens of the North. She was intelligent, fickle and moody, she rejected what the role of a woman was at the time. She caused a scandal when she decided not to marry and in 1654 when she abdicated her throne and she changed her name from Kristina Augusta Wasa, adopting the name Christina Alexandra. At the age of 28, the Minerva of the North moved to Rome, the Pope described Christina as a queen without a realm, a Christian without faith, and a woman without shame. Notwithstanding all that, she became a leader of the theatrical and musical life and protected many Baroque artists, composers, being the guest of five consecutive popes, and a symbol of the Counter Reformation, she is one of the few women buried in the Vatican grotto. Her unconventional lifestyle and masculine dressing and behavior have been featured in novels, plays, opera. In all the biographies on Christina her gender and cultural identity play an important role, Christina was born in the royal castle Tre Kronor. The king had already sired two daughters – a nameless princess stillborn in 1620 and then the first princess Christina, who was born in 1623, excited expectation surrounded Maria Eleonoras third pregnancy in 1626. When the baby was born it was first thought to be a boy as it was hairy and screamed, with a strong and she later wrote in her autobiography that, Deep embarrassment spread among the women when they discovered their mistake. The king, though, was happy, stating, Shell be clever. From most accounts, Gustav Adolf appears to have been attached to his daughter. Her mother remained disappointed that Christina was a girl and her mother, of the House of Hohenzollern, was a woman of quite distraught temperament and was melancholic. It is possible she was insane, after the king died on 6 November 1632 on the battlefield, his corpse was brought home in a coffin, with his heart in a separate box. Maria Eleonora ordered that the king should not be buried until she could be buried with him and she also demanded that the coffin be kept open, and went to see it regularly, patting it and taking no notice of the putrefaction. Eventually, the embarrassed Chancellor, Axel Oxenstierna, saw no other solution than to have a guard posted at the room to prevent further episodes, as a result, he was not buried until 22 June 1634, more than eighteen months later
7.
Annibale Carracci
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Annibale Carracci was an Italian painter, active in Bologna and later in Rome. Painters working under Annibale at the gallery of the Palazzo Farnese would be influential in Roman painting for decades. Annibale Carracci was born in Bologna, and in all likelihood was first apprenticed within his family, in 1582, Annibale, his brother Agostino and his cousin Ludovico Carracci opened a painters studio, initially called by some the Academy of the Desiderosi and subsequently the Incamminati. This eclecticism was to become the defining trait of the artists of the Baroque Emilian or Bolognese School, in many early Bolognese works by the Carraccis, it is difficult to distinguish the individual contributions made by each. For example, the frescoes on the story of Jason for Palazzo Fava in Bologna are signed Carracci, in 1585, Annibale completed an altarpiece of the Baptism of Christ for the church of Santi Gregorio e Siro in Bologna. In 1587, he painted the Assumption for the church of San Rocco in Reggio Emilia, in 1587–88, Annibale is known to have had travelled to Parma and then Venice, where he joined his brother Agostino. From 1589 to 1592, the three Carracci brothers completed the frescoes on the Founding of Rome for Palazzo Magnani in Bologna, by 1593, Annibale had completed an altarpiece, Virgin on the throne with St John and St Catherine, in collaboration with Lucio Massari. His Resurrection of Christ also dates from 1593, in 1592, he painted an Assumption for the Bonasoni chapel in San Francesco. During 1593-94, all three Carraccis were working on frescoes in Palazzo Sampieri in Bologna and his work would later inspire the untrammelled stream of Baroque illusionism and energy that would emerge in the grand frescoes of Cortona, Lanfranco, and in later decades Andrea Pozzo and Gaulli. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, the Farnese Ceiling was considered the masterpiece of fresco painting for its age. On the other hand, while admitting Caravaggios talents as a painter, Bellori deplored his over-naturalistic style, if not his turbulent morals and he thus viewed the Caravaggisti styles with the same gloomy dismay. Painters were urged to depict the Platonic ideal of beauty, not Roman street-walkers, yet Carracci and Caravaggio patrons and pupils did not all fall into irreconcilable camps. Contemporary patrons, such as Marquess Vincenzo Giustiniani, found both applied showed excellence in maniera and modeling, in our century, observers have warmed to the rebel myth of Caravaggio, and often ignore the profound influence on art that Carracci had. Caravaggio almost never worked in fresco, regarded as the test of a great painters mettle, on the other hand, Carraccis best works are in fresco. Thus the somber canvases of Caravaggio, with benighted backgrounds, are suited to the contemplative altars, wittkower was surprised that a Farnese cardinal surrounded himself with frescoes of libidinous themes, indicative of a considerable relaxation of counter-reformatory morality. This thematic choice suggests Carracci may have been more rebellious relative to the often-solemn religious passion of Caravaggios canvases, wittkower states Carraccis frescoes convey the impression of a tremendous joie de vivre, a new blossoming of vitality and of an energy long repressed. It is instructive to compare Carraccis Assumption with Caravaggios Death of the Virgin, among early contemporaries, Carracci would have been an innovator. He re-enlivened Michelangelos visual fresco vocabulary, and posited a muscular and vivaciously brilliant pictorial landscape, while Michelangelo could bend and contort the body into all the possible perspectives, Carracci in the Farnese frescoes had shown how it could dance
8.
Federico Barocci
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Federico Barocci was an Italian Renaissance painter and printmaker. His original name was Federico Fiori, and he was nicknamed Il Baroccio and his work was highly esteemed and influential, and foreshadows the Baroque of Rubens. He was born at Urbino, Duchy of Urbino, and received his earliest apprenticeship with his father, Ambrogio Barocci and he was then apprenticed with the painter Battista Franco in Urbino. He accompanied his uncle, Bartolomeo Genga to Pesaro, then in 1548 to Rome, where he was worked in the pre-eminent studio of the day, that of the Mannerist painters, Taddeo and Federico Zuccari. After passing four years at Rome, he returned to his native city, during this second sojourn, while completing the decorations for the Vatican, Barocci fell ill with intestinal complaints. He suspected that a salad which he had eaten had been poisoned by jealous rivals, fearing his illness was terminal, he left Rome in 1563, four years later he was said to experience a partial remission after prayers to the Virgin. Barocci henceforth often complained of health, though he remained productive for nearly four decades more. While he is described by contemporaries as personally somewhat morose and hypochondriacal, his paintings are lively and brilliant. Although he continued to have major commissions from afar, he never returned to Rome. The Ducal Palace can be seen in the background of his paintings, while Barocci was removed from Rome, the fulcrum of artistic fame and influence, he continued to innovate in his style. At some point he may have seen colored chalk/pastel drawings by Correggio, in pastels and in oil sketches Baroccis soft, opalescent renderings evoke the ethereal. Such studies were part of a complex process Barocci used to complete his altarpieces, an organized series of steps leading up to the final product ensured its speed and success in execution. Barocci did innumerable sketches, gestural, compositional, figural studies, lighting studies, perspective studies, color studies, nature studies, today, over 2,000 drawings by him are extant. Every detail of his subsequent cartoons for canvases was worked out in this way, a good example is his famed Madonna del Popolo. It is a vortex of color and vitality, made possible by the variety of people, poses, perspectives, natural details, colors, lighting. There are many surviving drawings for the Madonna del Popolo, from sketches to color studies of heads. Despite this painstaking process, Baroccis genius kept the brushstrokes passionate and liberated, and a spiritual light seems to flicker as a jewel across faces, hands, drapery, Baroccis embrace of the Counter Reformation would shape his long and fruitful career. By 1566, he joined a lay order of Capuchins, an offshoot of Franciscans and he may have been influenced by Saint Philip Neri, whose Oratorians sought to reconnect the spiritual realm with the lives of everyday people
9.
Caravaggio
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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian painter active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1592 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, in scarcely a year or so’s sojourn in Naples, he rapidly established himself once more as the most prominent painter, exploiting high-ranking connections. It was not long before these connections gave him an opening to travel on in 1607 to Malta, governed by the Order of Knights Hospitallers, Caravaggio probably hoped that the Knights would provide a channel whereby he could obtain a pardon from the Papacy. Once more his talents made an instant impression, along with the support of noble patrons and his hopes dashed, he contrived to escape and flee once, which before the end of 1608 led to his cancellation from the rolls of the Order. He made for Syracuse in Sicily, where he was received as a guest by a friend from his Roman days, the painter’s face was disfigured and rumours started to circulate of his death. Various commentators have formulated opinions about his state from works supposedly executed at this period. In fact, Caravaggio’s end is shrouded in mystery, mystery that is rendered only denser by conflicting hypotheses, some speak of a natural death from a persistent fever, others of an assassination by emissaries of the Knights of Malta. The loss of the paintings put the deal and his future in doubt, there is evidence that dogged by a serious fever, he was tended by a local religious confraternity near Porto Ercole, then in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, but succumbed. His death was certified by them as taking place on 18 July 1610, if the story to this point is exact, it is likely he was buried in a paupers’ common grave. As to the place, though this continues to be contested. Famous while he lived, Caravaggio was forgotten almost immediately after his death, despite this, his influence on the new Baroque style that eventually emerged from the ruins of Mannerism was profound. The 20th-century art historian André Berne-Joffroy claimed, What begins in the work of Caravaggio is, quite simply, modern painting. Caravaggio was born in Milan where his father, Fermo, was an administrator and architect-decorator to the Marchese of Caravaggio. His mother, Lucia Aratori, came from a family of the same district. In 1576 the family moved to Caravaggio to escape a plague which ravaged Milan, Caravaggios mother died in 1584, the same year he began his four-year apprenticeship to the Milanese painter Simone Peterzano, described in the contract of apprenticeship as a pupil of Titian. Following his initial training under Simone Peterzano, in 1592 Caravaggio left Milan for Rome, in flight after certain quarrels, in Rome, where there was a demand for paintings to fill the many huge new churches and palazzos being built at the time. It was also a period when the Church was searching for an alternative to Mannerism in religious art that was tasked to counter the threat of Protestantism. Caravaggios innovation was a radical naturalism that combined close observation with a dramatic, even theatrical
10.
Peter Paul Rubens
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Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish/Netherlandish draughtsman and painter. He is widely considered as the most notable artist of Flemish Baroque art school, the catalogue of his works by Michael Jaffé lists 1,403 pieces, excluding numerous copies made in his workshop. His commissioned works were mostly history paintings, which included religious and mythological subjects and he painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house and he also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the royal entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635. His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not overly detailed and he also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. For altarpieces he painted on slate to reduce reflection problems. Rubens was born in the city of Siegen to Jan Rubens and he was named in honour of Saint-Peter and Paul, because he was born on their solemnety. His father, a Calvinist, and mother fled Antwerp for Cologne in 1568, after increased religious turmoil and persecution of Protestants during the rule of the Spanish Netherlands by the Duke of Alba. Jan Rubens became the adviser of Anna of Saxony, the second wife of William I of Orange. Following Jan Rubens imprisonment for the affair, Peter Paul Rubens was born in 1577, the family returned to Cologne the next year. In 1589, two years after his fathers death, Rubens moved with his mother Maria Pypelincks to Antwerp, religion figured prominently in much of his work and Rubens later became one of the leading voices of the Catholic Counter-Reformation style of painting. In Antwerp, Rubens received a Renaissance humanist education, studying Latin, by fourteen he began his artistic apprenticeship with Tobias Verhaeght. Subsequently, he studied under two of the leading painters of the time, the late Mannerist artists Adam van Noort. Much of his earliest training involved copying earlier works, such as woodcuts by Hans Holbein the Younger. Rubens completed his education in 1598, at time he entered the Guild of St. Luke as an independent master. In 1600 Rubens travelled to Italy and he stopped first in Venice, where he saw paintings by Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto, before settling in Mantua at the court of Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga. The colouring and compositions of Veronese and Tintoretto had an effect on Rubenss painting. With financial support from the Duke, Rubens travelled to Rome by way of Florence in 1601, there, he studied classical Greek and Roman art and copied works of the Italian masters
