The Age of Rubens

This thoroughly interdisciplinary collection of essays explores the multi-faceted relationship between international politics, diplomacy and the visual arts that developed during the early seventeenth century. Several chapters provide major re-evaluations of the career of Peter Paul Rubens as an artistdiplomat, based on previously neglected manuscript sources and a deepened analysis of the social and political environments in which he operated. Other contributors focus on Rubens<U+2019>s contemporary court artists, such as Anthony van Dyck, Guido Reni and Diego Velázquez. In addition to providing original interpretations of several important paintings and painting cycles, the volume examines such topics as the evolution of personified images of nationality, representations of dynastic marriages, the material culture of royal bridal trousseaus, the importance of details of costume and colour to the visual codes of baroque courts, and the roles played by artists within court societies. Ranging across Western Europe, from England to the Low Countries, France, Germany, Spain and Italy, these essays demonstrate conclusively the subtlety and complexity of visual communication within early baroque court societies, which enabled artists to convey complex political messages through paintings. The contributors to this volume display a variety of methodological approaches, demonstrating many different ways in which historical research can be fruitfully integrated with art historical analysis to generate new insights into both the visual culture and the politics of baroque Europe. -- publisher's statement.