Peter Paul
Peter Paul Rubens,
from 1598 a master of the Antwerp St Luke's Artisans' Guild, ignored the
ironic comments of his detractors. Politically committed, the Flemish
painter acted as a diplomat for the Spanish Governors of the Netherlands,
which enabled him to travel often and extensively. He soon made enough
money with his painting to be financially secure. After serving several
royal Courts, he realised that he "could not stand Court life", although
he did accept an appointment as Court Painter to the Spanish Governors of
the Netherlands. Rubens built a house in Antwerp, where he lived and
worked most of the time. Elevated to the peerage, he even bought a castle,
leading the life of a country gentleman. His meteoric rise to fame and
fortune was only possible because he was showered with commissions. Over
3,000 paintings are known to have left his studio, where he employed a
great many assistants. Only some 600 of these works were painted by his
own hand. Sharing a love of Greek and Roman literature with many of his
contemporaries,
Rubens
gleaned the motif for The Rape of the Leucippidae from
mythology. Malicious contemporaries regarded it as "a bundle of bodies
tied up in a knot". Again,
Rubens
chose to illustrate a dramatic event. The nude women are the daughters of
Leucippus, King of Argos. The Hellenistic pastoral poet Theocritus told a
late version of the story of how they were kidnapped from their wedding
feast after marrying Idas and Lvnceus. The miscreants, the twins Castor
and Pollux, were demigods who had also fallen m love with the sisters.
Rubens
does not depict the sequel to the kidnapping, although it would certainly
have been a classic motif for the artist: the bridegrooms' pursuit of the
kidnappers ended with both bridegrooms and one kidnapper dead. Zeus, the
demigods' father, executed Idas with a thunderbolt. Pollux, who was
immortal, was the only survivor of the slaughter.
