| The Peasants Returning From the Fields | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Peter Paul Reubens |
| Year | 1640 c. |
| Medium | oil on panel |
| Dimensions | 121 cm× 194 cm(48 in× 76 in) |
| Location | Galleria Palatina, Florence |
The Peasants' Return From The Fields is a c. 1640 painting by Peter Paul Rubens. It arrived in Florence in 1765 and is now in the Galleria Palatina in Florence.
The dating of the work has fluctuated between 1620 and 1635, the year in which the painting was copied and the copy was signed and dated by its maker.
The most convincing hypotheses date the painting to the early 1630s. Some date The Peasants' Return to 1632–1634, when it would perhaps have been a collaboration with Lucas van Uden. [1] Others to the latest phase of Rubens' production, in 1640. For the cart, the artist used two preparatory drawings. One (at Chatsworth House, in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire) depicts a reaper on the right, and the other depicts two carts (in the collection of the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin, n. 3237). There are other parallels between the second figure on the right and the peasant woman on the right in drawings at the Uffizi's Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe collection. Meanwhile, the five people on the right can be seen in a copy of the Reubens' in the Albertina museum.
The Peasants' Return has long been a pendant, a companion piece, to Odysseus on the Island of the Phaecians . Both panels were in the collection of the Duke of Richelieu in 1677 and, after some time in the Hapsburg collection, arrived in Florence in 1765 by the initiative of the Lorena family. The panels were brought to Paris by French commissioners in March and April of 1799 and remained in France until the end of 1815. Even in the reports written by Canova and Karcher during French restitutions, they are described together.
The protagonist of the painting is the landscape, with the bucolic scene appearing as a simple pretext for the representation. The composition looks out from a high point onto the vista, on a countryside punctuated by trees and a horizon that falls, more or less, at the middle of the painting. Various people, in small scale, specify the moment of representation in the style of genre paintings by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. There are a series of peasants returning after work in the fields and a wagon with a man riding a horse that seems to stop for a flock of sheep along the road. Between the two women carrying hay and the rams, an artist pentimento is visible.
It is likely a landscape of Malines, [1] interpreted as a serene vision of nature bathed in golden light. The sky is furrowed by bare canvas, which echoes the diagonal lines visible in the painting's lower half.
Pieter Brueghelthe Younger was a Flemish painter known for numerous copies after his father Pieter Bruegel the Elder's work, as well as original compositions and Bruegelian pastiches. The large output of his studio, which produced for the local and export market, contributed to the international spread of his father's imagery.
Pieter Bruegelthe Elder was among the most significant artists of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, a painter and printmaker, known for his landscapes and peasant scenes ; he was a pioneer in presenting both types of subject as large paintings.
Jan Brueghelthe Elder was a Flemish painter and draughtsman. He was the son of the eminent Flemish Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder. A close friend and frequent collaborator with Peter Paul Rubens, the two artists were the leading Flemish painters in the first three decades of the 17th century.
Jacob (Jacques) Jordaens was a Flemish painter, draughtsman and a designer of tapestries and prints. He was a prolific artist who created biblical, mythological, and allegorical compositions, genre scenes, landscapes, illustrations of Flemish sayings and portraits. After the death of Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, he became the leading Flemish Baroque painter of his time. Unlike those illustrious contemporaries he never travelled abroad to study the Antique and Italian painting and, except for a few short trips to locations elsewhere in the Low Countries, he resided in Antwerp his entire life. He also remained largely indifferent to Rubens and van Dyck's intellectual and courtly aspirations. This attitude was expressed in his art through a lack of idealistic treatment which contrasted with that of these contemporaries.
David Teniers the Younger or David Teniers II was a Flemish Baroque painter, printmaker, draughtsman, miniaturist painter, staffage painter, copyist and art curator. He was an extremely versatile artist known for his prolific output. He was an innovator in a wide range of genres such as history painting, genre painting, landscape painting, portrait and still life. He is now best remembered as the leading Flemish genre painter of his day. Teniers is particularly known for developing the peasant genre, the tavern scene, pictures of collections and scenes with alchemists and physicians.
The Elevation of the Cross is the name of two paintings, a very large triptych in oil on panel and a much smaller oil on paper painting. Both pieces were painted by the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens in Antwerp, Belgium, the original in 1610 and the latter in 1638. The original is a winged altarpiece, with the outside of the hinged wings also painted. These can be folded over the central panel, giving an 'open view' and a 'closed view'.
Jan Miel was a Flemish painter and engraver who was active in Italy. He initially formed part of the circle of Dutch and Flemish genre painters in Rome who are referred to as the 'Bamboccianti' and were known for their scenes depicting the lower classes in Rome. He later developed away from the Bamboccianti style and painted history subjects in a classicising style.
Sebastiaen Vrancx, Sebastiaan Vrancx or Sebastian Vranckx was a Flemish Baroque painter, draughtsman and designer of prints who is mainly known for his battle scenes, a genre that he pioneered in Netherlandish painting. He also created landscapes with mythological and allegorical scenes, scenes with robbers, village scenes and celebrations in cities. He was a gifted figure painter who was regularly invited to paint the staffage in compositions of fellow painters. As an active member of a local chamber of rhetoric, he wrote comedies and a number of poems. He was further captain of the Antwerp civil militia schutterij.
Flemish Baroque painting was a style of painting in the Southern Netherlands during Spanish control in the 16th and 17th centuries. The period roughly begins when the Dutch Republic was split from the Habsburg Spain regions to the south with the Spanish recapturing of Antwerp in 1585 and goes until about 1700, when Spanish Habsburg authority ended with the death of King Charles II. Antwerp, home to the prominent artists Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, and Jacob Jordaens, was the artistic nexus, while other notable cities include Brussels and Ghent.
Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish artist and diplomat. He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque tradition. Rubens's highly charged compositions reference erudite aspects of classical and Christian history. His unique and immensely popular Baroque style emphasized movement, colour, and sensuality, which followed the immediate, dramatic artistic style promoted in the Counter-Reformation. Rubens was a painter producing altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. He was also a prolific designer of cartoons for the Flemish tapestry workshops and of frontispieces for the publishers in Antwerp.
The Portrait of Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia is a painting by Rubens of Isabella Clara Eugenia. It is dated to 1625 and shows her in the habit of the Poor Clares, which she assumed on 22 October 1621 after the death of her husband Archduke Albert of Austria. She visited the painter's studio while on her way back from Breda in 1625 to see the painting begun, as a master copy from which several others could be drawn. The master copy is now in the Galleria Palatina in Florence, having been traded in the past for a portrait of the same subject by Anthony van Dyck. Two other copies are known in private collections, while a third is in the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena.
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The Madonna of the Basket or the Madonna della Cesta is a painting by Peter Paul Rubens, dated to around 1615. It is now held in the Galleria Palatina of the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. Between 1799 and 1815 it was confiscated by the French and assigned to the Dijon Museum of Fine Arts.
The Four Philosophers is an oil painting on panel painted in 1611–12 by Peter Paul Rubens. It is now held in the Galleria Palatina of the Palazzo Pitti in Florence.
The Three Graces is a grisaille painting by Peter Paul Rubens, dating to 1620–1623. It is now held in the Galleria Palatina in Florence.
Odysseus on the island of the Phaecians is a landscape painting by Peter Paul Rubens, dating to around 1630–1635. It shows Nausicaa and her maids discovering Odysseus on Phaecia. It is now in the Galleria Palatina in Florence.
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Passerini Assumption is an oil-on-panel painting executed in 1526 by Italian Renaissance artist Andrea del Sarto. It is housed in the Galleria Palatina of Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Italy.
Adoration of the Magi is a c.1522-1523 oil on panel painting by Pontormo, produced for the antechamber of Giovan Maria Benitendi's palazzo in Florence and now in the Galleria Palatina in the same city.
The Portrait of Ferdinand I, Duke of Parma is an oil-on-panel painting by German artist Johann Zoffany, executed in 1778-1779. It is held at the Galleria nazionale di Parma. The painting was already part of the museum collection in 1791, exhibited in the Meeting Room of the Academy of Fine Arts of Parma.