Great Artists 1. [antikvár]

Rubens (1577-I640)Peter Paul Rubens, was born in 1577. His family came From Antwerp, which is in that part of the Low Countries which we now call Belgium.In those days, Holland and Belgium were a collection of separate provinces under Spanish rule, and the people were beginning to rebel against their oppressors. Rubens' father had to escape to Germany from the Spaniards, and it was there, in a little town called Siegen, that Rubens was born. Until he was nine he lived in Cologne with his parents and his brother Philip. In 1587 his father died and his mother took the young brothers back to Antwerp.Rubens went to school in Antwerp and learned Latin and Greek. His mother wanted him to be a courtier, and when he was thirteen she sent him to be a page in the court of an elderly princess, Marguerite de Ligne. This was not a very interesting life for a young boy who was already beginning to show signs of a talent for drawing.^Rubens asked his mother to take him away from court, and in 1591 he was sent to study with a landscape painter named Tobias Verhaecht. After six months he went to work with another artist, Adam Van Noort, and Rubens spent four years in this artist's rather rough and lively studio. His third teacher"was a much-travelled and clever man named Otto Van Veen, and Rubens worked in his studio until 1600.