Great Artists - DVD 4 (Rubens, Velàzquez, Rembrandt)

Rubens (1577-1640)
The life of Peter Paul Rubens was perhaps the most active and eventful of any artist in history. He is regarded as the chief exponent of the Baroque style, merging the grace of the Italian High Renaissance with the realism and landscapes genres of the northern tradition. His career mirrors rapidly developing politics of an emergent Europe, as not only did he paint for the Italian nobility, but for the Spanish, French and English courts. Born a Protestant and raised as a Catholic in Antwerp, Rubens found himself on the front line of the Counter Reformation, both as a painter and a diplomat. A highly versatile artist, Rubens was equally at home painting altarpieces, history and mythological scenes, portraits and landscapes. He is perhaps best known for the voluptuous female nudes, which are often found in his large-scale mythological allegories. In Antwerp Rubens ran a highly successful studio, employing many apprentices including Anthony van Dyck, who went on to become court painter to Charles I of England and Scotland. Rubens was the most celebrated painter of the early 17th century, one of the most prolific in history and an artist who did much to develop different genres of painting.
Works featured in this program include Samson and Delilah (1609, National Gallery, London), Self Portrait with Isabella Brant (1609-10, Alte Pinakothek, Munich), The Descent from the Cross (1611-14, Antwerp Cathedral, Antwerp), The Life of Marie de'Medici (1621-25, Louvre, Paris), Peace and War (1630, National Gallery, London) and Het Pelsken (The Little Fur) (c.1635-40, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).

Velàzquez (1599-1640)
In a Spain dominated by a fervent religiosity, the painter Diego de Silva y Velàzquez emerged as a master practitioner of a secular form of art. His masterpiece, Las Meninas, is a painting full of mystery and intrigue, a work of startling intellectual and artistic complexity and the culmination of a unique relationship between Velàzquez and his patron, King Philip IV of Spain. From 1623, Velàzquez was employed to paint the family and court of Philip IV. His paintings remain as an enormously insightful record of the development of the royal family and, in many ways, the decline of the most powerful court in Europe. Under the watchful eye of Philip's first minister, Count-Duke Olivares, Velàzquez single-handedly redefined the image of the Spanish monarchy, in manner akin to a modern-day public relations campaign. Whilst Velàzquez's output was dominated by royal portraiture, he also produced psychologically insightful studies of people at the margins of society, such as the buffoons of the royal court or the poor of Seville. Velàzquez's unique painting style, which combined at one time or another dramatic lighting, intense coloring and ever more loose brushstrokes, was dominated by a single preoccupation - to capture a degree of naturalism hitherto unachieved in the history of art. His work came to be admired by many in the centuries to come and as the French painter Edouard Manet remarked, 'He is the painter of painters'.
Works featured in this program include The Waterseller of Seville (1620, Wellington Museum, London), The Forge of Vulcan (1630, Prado, Madrid), The Surrender of Breda (1635, Prado, Madrid), Juan De Pareja (1650, Metropolitan Museum Of Art, New York) and Las Meninas (1656, Prado, Madrid).

Rembrandt (1606-1669)
Two eyes peer out of the gloom, they are the eyes of Rembrandt van Rijn, a man whose name is synonymous with the Dutch Golden Age and the city of Amsterdam. Although he was not a man of letters, Rembrandt left posterity a comprehensive autobiography; his self-portraits. Rembrandt drew, etched and painted his own likeness over a hundred times resulting in a unique record of not only his changing physical appearance, but the development of his artistic career. In his portraiture, Rembrandt was able to render a sense of the interior lives of his subjects, providing an insight into the self. Yet not only did he depict wealthy patrons but also the poor that he encountered throughout his life, painting them with immense empathy. Yet to limit Rembrandt's reputation to portraiture is to underestimate his achievements. He painted religious, historical and contemporary scenes, as well as landscapes and animals. Such scenes are full of dramatic intensity, without being over theatrical. Like the Venetian master, Titian, Rembrandt's brushstrokes became bolder as he grew older, his later paintings displaying rough and thickly applied paint. Rembrandt is the pre-eminent master of Dutch painting and for many, Holland's greatest artist.
Works featured in this program include Self-Portrait (1629, Alte Pinakothek, Munich), The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Nicolaes Tulp (1632, Mauritshuis Museum, The Hague), The Descent from the Cross (1633, Alte Pinakothek, Munich), Self-Portrait (1640, National Gallery, London) The Night Watch (1642, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) and Hendrickje Bathing in a River (1654, National Gallery, London)