Rubens & Women review, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

'Diana Returning from the Hunt' by Peter Paul Rubens

(Image credit: Art Collection 2/Alamy Stock Photo)

published 27 October 2023

Peter Paul Rubens is an artist renowned "as a painter of flesh", said Hannah McGivern in The Art Newspaper. Indeed, such was the Flemish baroque master's "penchant for nudes" that the term "Rubenesque" has become "shorthand for a voluptuous female body". This new show at Dulwich Picture Gallery brings together some 40 masterpieces in an attempt to dispel the cliché of Rubens as a painter of curvaceous sex objects, and to examine the important role of women in his life. In fact, it shows that he painted women as "powerful, energetic, even courageous" characters, frequently depicting them in heroic contexts or as serene deities. Featuring "tender portraits" of family members as well as paintings based on mythological or biblical sources, it promises to cast an entirely new light on the artist.

Rubens (1577-1640) wasn't a womaniser, said Hettie Judah in The i Paper. In fact, he was "uxorious to a fault". The "comely" female subjects he depicted with increased frequency in his final decade often carry the face – and indeed the "full breasts, thighs and buttocks" – of his second wife, Helena Fourment, reputed to be the most beautiful woman in Antwerp. Fourment was just 16 when she married the 53-year-old painter. As a "remarkably intimate" chalk drawing thought to depict her demonstrates, he was clearly "obsessed" with her. Yet his "fascination with the female form" long predates Fourment. We see portraits of his "spirited" first wife Isabella, who died young, and of their "meltingly sweet" daughter Clara Serena, as well as likenesses of various female patrons, including the Spanish Infanta. The show argues that his depictions of "dimpled, weighty" flesh stem from his dedication "to painting real bodies". Yet his "fleshy tendencies" do tip into "preposterous excess": witness "The Birth of the Milky Way" (1636-38), in which a naked Juno sits atop a cloud before a gold chariot drawn by peacocks, and creates the galaxy "with milk squirting from her pearly pink breast".

The argument that paintings like this depict "empowered" female subjects seems unconvincing to me, said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. To my eye, they have a "fantasy-like, even fetishistic quality". Yet this exhibition reminds us that they were only one aspect of Rubens' oeuvre. There are also tender family portraits; Isabella Clara Eugenia, Archduchess of the Netherlands, depicted as a nun; and a marchesa from a Genoese banking family, appearing to "float upon her ruff... as if her identity were disconnected altogether from her body". Particularly striking is a "spellbinding meditation on the battle of the sexes", which depicts Diana, the goddess of chastity, returning from the hunt under the watchful eye of "leering male satyrs". It is one of many highlights of this "clever, enterprising show".