The Flemish painter and diplomat Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) was not only the unquestioned leader of the Flemish baroque school but one of the supreme geniuses in the history of painting.

During the last troubled decades of the 16th century the Flemish school of painting fell into a kind of tepid and uninventive mannerism which gave little promise of bringing forth a great master. Yet it was in this school that Peter Paul Rubens received his first training as an artist and acquired that belief in the humanistic values of classical antiquity that was to continue undiminished throughout his career.

Within his own lifetime Rubens enjoyed a European reputation which brought him commissions from Italy, Spain, France, England, and Germany as well as from his homeland, the southern Netherlands. His boundless imagination, immense capacity for work, and sheer productivity were legendary. In 1621, when he was not yet 45 years...