Pieter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)"was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an extravagant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality." (Wikipedia)
There's a reason why my email is juliette.rubens13@gmail.com.
First, Juliette is the name of a character of the novel "Holy fools" by Joanne Harris (who is famous for having written "Chocolat"); then, 13 is my favourite number and, finally, Rubens is one of the most brilliant artists, in my own view. I know a little about his life, but I've seen with my own eyes many of his paintings in Rome at Palazzo Pitti ("The Consequences of War") and in the National Gallery in London ("Samson and Delilah", "The Judgement of Paris" and others), and I've always been fascinated by his taste, his style. Colours, shapes, structures, myths...
I post here two of his works: "The Judgement of Paris" (which I personally saw and enjoyed) and "The Death of Hyppolitus", preserved in the Fitzwilliam Museum of Cambridge, "a masterpiece of controlled chaos", as critics wrote. I'm fond of this painting, I find it marvellous.
Here is the story of the Greek myth: The subject is the death of Hippolytus, son of the Greek hero Theseus. After being falsely accused of attempting to rape his stepmother, Phaedra, Hippolytus is cursed and banished by his father. The sea god Poseidon sends a monstrous bull from the depths of the ocean which terrifies the young man's chariot team and causes the bloody and fatal accident that we see here. Hippolytus, whose name means ‘loosed horse,’ tragically lives up to his name.
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