Peter Paul Rubens’ Travels in Europe

T he Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens famously once described himself as “just a simple man standing alone with my old brushes, asking God for inspiration.” Rubens – a prolific Old Masters painter known for vivid work often involving religious figures – was blessed with an innate ingenuity that was nothing short of divine.

But the many decades Rubens spent traveling throughout Europe in the early 17th century also significantly shaped his extraordinary painting abilities, often displayed in sprawling altarpieces. These extensive sojourns, which he sometimes took for years at a time, not only exposed Rubens to the great works created by his forebears, his contemporaries and even his competitors. They also resulted in him absorbing a bevy of artistic techniques that later earned him the distinction of the greatest painter of the Flemish Baroque period. The fruits of Rubens’ remarkable travels are imbued into the sumptuous pieces included in the watershed Masters Week auctions at Sotheby’s New York and London, presented in partnership with Qatar Executive.

Drawn from several crucial points in Rubens’ illustrious career, these varied pieces – ranging from a close head study to an oil sketch – tell the story of a painter who recognized that raw talent alone does not make for a great artist. Rather, Rubens knew becoming a master of his craft required a sense of humility, too: He had to at once nurture his artistic curiosities and study brushwork, color and composition to painstaking degrees, but also open his mind to the new ideas he experienced throughout his ventures in the likes of England, Italy and Spain.

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Born in Siegen, Germany in 1577, Rubens spent his formative years living in Antwerp. As a precocious teenager, he set on the path to becoming an artist. He had barely finished his training when he packed his bags for Italy, landing in Venice in May of 1600. The impressionable Rubens spent nearly a decade traveling throughout the country reproducing Renaissance works, admiring Italian architecture and studying up on classical techniques from the Venetian school that he then imbued in his art. There, he also became the court painter to Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga of Mantua. As the Siegerland Museum (of Siegen, Ruben’s hometown) notes, it wasn’t uncommon for artists in those days to travel so they could meet with clients and present their work. Ruben’s Italian travels undoubtedly helped him shore up a successful business as a commissioned painter, and he soon became known for his sweeping altarpieces that he created for the likes of Jesuit churches in Genoa.

Although he ended up returning to Antwerp in 1608 for a spell, Ruben’s years in Italy stayed with him for the rest of his life. While back in Belgium, Rubens built himself a substantial home, replete with a circular studio nodding to Rome’s Pantheon. During that period, Rubens also began working on what would become the staggering Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine, a painting sold in the recent Old Masters and 19th Century Paintings Evening Auction at Sotheby’s London, where it achieved £2.4 million – more than than double its high estimate. Likely completed circa 1615, the painting exudes a brilliant sense of coloring – one that would later be known as Rubens’ signature style. The composition of the piece, featuring the recurring images of Saint Catherine and the Infant Christ at the center of the frame, also nods to the formative time Rubens spent while immersed in the splendor of Renaissance-era Italian art.

In the following decades, Rubens experienced several equally transformative trips to Spain. On the second of these trips, he had the opportunity to study the Spanish Royal collection works in Madrid, which included a vast collection of Titian paintings, for several months. Rubens, who had begun collecting during his days in Italy, started scooping up paintings by Titian around this time as well. Titian’s works had a profound effect on Rubens, an influence that can be seen prominently in the dazzling Annunciation oil sketch included in the upcoming Sotheby’s New York sale on February 6, 2025.

Created as the study for an altarpiece similarly depicting the Virgin Mary and the Angel Gabriel, the oil sketch is unique in that it offers a rare glimpse into Rubens’ creative process, says Daria Rose Foner, the Associate Vice President of Old Masters Paintings at Sotheby’s New York. “You can see him working through passages, thinking through compositional challenges, playing with tonality,” she says. “They have a spontaneity of execution that gives the impression that one is witnessing the very act of creation or artistic invention, in a sense combining the intimacy of drawings with the materiality of paintings.”

While Rubens was always a proficient colorist, he undoubtedly honed this skill “even more deeply during his time in Spain,” Foner continues. Borrowing heavily from Titian for this particular oil sketch, Rubens used “loose brushwork” and “rich jewel tones” to create the “swirling drapery of the windswept angel, deep reds of the curtain behind the Virgin, yellows and pinks of the angel’s tunic (which are somewhat tempered in the final painting),” Foner adds.

After a lifetime of travel throughout Europe, which also included a stint in diplomacy, Rubens returned to Antwerp and continued painting until his death in 1640. Late in his life, Rubens continued treading new ground and dedicated himself to further understanding how to perfect even the slightest details in his art: His head study of a bearded man, finished circa 1637, part of yet another majestic altarpiece, also recently sold in the Sotheby’s London sale, for £504,000. With scintillating detail emanating from every pencil stroke, the study stands as a monument to Rubens’ creativity, honed from his many years of travel and subsequent enlightenment.

Alongside the oil sketch and painting as part of the Old Masters sale, these pieces ultimately embody how Ruben’s intrepid travels “enabled him to encounter a broad and varied assortment of art, which sparked his creative imagination,” Foner adds. “One feels that his travels enabled him to develop a visual corpus from which he could continuously draw over the course of his career.”

Past Auction

Master Paintings Part I

6 February 2025 | 10:00 AM EST | New York