Painting : Venus at the Mirror: Rubens. 1615
Is Venus beautiful? Is the woman modeling for the artist beautiful? Back in 1615 she was.
The model is Hélène, wife of the artist.
Peter Paul Rubens was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish and European painter, a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasised movement, colour, and sensuality. Rubens is known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. And for paintings of his young wife.
In 1630, four years after the death of his first wife, the 53-year-old painter married 16-year-old Hélène Fourment, an acknowledged beauty. She inspired the voluptuous figures in so many of his paintings from then on.
Can you spare a dime for an old dame?Tags: Beauty
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March 15th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
What a great site. I see who the designer is too.
There is an in-between the anorexic and the Rubens models though don’t you think.
Not that it matters.
March 16th, 2008 at 1:48 am
I think the young woman posing as Venus at the Mirror is extremely lovely. She has the strong lower back and sturdy thighs of a healthy adult female. Her hips are solid and broad, her whole centre of gravity is in those hips. A beautiful woman.