If the prospect of five galleries filled with Old Master paintings sounds as exciting as a mandatory school field trip, you’re in for a surprise at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor museum.
Thirty paintings and a number of prints by Peter Paul Rubens convey the Baroque spirit of his era — as a Flemish artist who studied in Rome — and deliver it to museum visitors today with stunning emotional impact.
The exhibit, “Early Rubens,” covers 1609-1621, and the title suggests that the artist, who lived until 1640, is preparing for a celebrated career. But his acclaimed style is already evident in this collection’s swirling dramatic action, intense color, bold contrast, and compositions that appear almost three-dimensional.
It’s a theatrical style that one can imagine inspiring cinematic epics like “Samson and Delilah” — subjects used twice by Rubens, once in Technicolor by Cecil B. DeMille. And yes, Rubens’ Delilah, and other figures with shimmering flesh, show how the term “Rubenesque” evolved for ample female bodies.
“Early Rubens,” running through Sept. 8, is collaboration between San Francisco’s Fine Arts Museums (the Legion of Honor and de Young) and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. It includes Rubens masterworks from both their collections: “The Tribute Money” from San Francisco and the recently rediscovered “The Massacre of the Innocents” from Toronto.
One newspaper’s preview of the exhibit pointed out that Europe’s museums are “packed to the rafters” with Rubens’ oversize paintings, and that the show gives Americans “a chance to wallow in the excess.” Although most of the works are more modest in size, three huge paintings greet visitors at the entry: “The Flight of Lot and His Family from Sodom,” “Daniel in the Lions’ Den” and “The Boar Hunt.”
Aside from the dramatic subjects and vivid characterizations — even the lions have personalities — these three paintings show the breadth of the exhibit’s sources, from the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., to the Ringling Museum in Florida to the Fine Arts Museum in Marseille, France.
Rubens himself was an international figure. His Protestant family fled Antwerp, Belgium, before he was born when the city became Catholic under Spanish Rule. He returned to Antwerp with his mother after his father’s death, apprenticed with three different artists, traveled to Italy to study, and served the Duke of Mantua as an artist and ambassador.
After his mother’s death, he became a court painter — and a diplomat. Commissions for paintings brought enormous success and a studio with scores of assistants completing Rubens’ works. He was able to produce masterworks both for the Catholic Church and for Protestant patrons, notes Sasha Suda, co-curator of the exhibit with Kirk Nickel.
Commercial success alone would not make Rubens renowned for four centuries. He was, as even a modest art directory puts it, “an inventive genius.” He studied Caravaggio and Correggio in Rome, took the passionate Baroque style home to Antwerp and added the North’s attention to intimate detail. No artist matched the shimmering, almost translucent flesh of many of his figures — particularly his depictions of Christ.
One of the exhibit’s galleries, a section titled “The Life and Death of Christ,” encapsulates Rubens’ career and his mastery. Start with “The Annunciation,” the depiction of the Archangel Gabriel’s announcement to the Virgin Mary of Jesus’ impending birth: The precise expressions, swirling fabric of the two figures’ clothing and the lighting give dramatic weight to the episode for anyone viewing the painting, in the 1600s or today.
Also in the gallery, “The Tribute Money” shows Christ’s confrontation with Jewish elders, so vividly reacting with amazement, curiosity or indifference. “Holy Family with Saint Elizabeth, Saint John, and a Dove,” portrays Christ and John the Baptist, as the exhibit caption points out, “handling the dove of the Holy Spirit with such familiarity that the bird has lost several feathers.”
Even in this relatively modest-size exhibit, covering a portion of Rubens’ career, there is remarkable variety. The melodrama of the gallery with the theme “Allure and Transgression” is meant to shock and captivate with lifelike detail. “The Massacre of the Innocents” seems to spill victims out of the frame. “The Head of Medusa” is another “I can’t look/I must look” depiction.
By the end of the exhibit, visitors may want to remind themselves that for Rubens’ patrons, these were familiar characters, settings and situations, and the paintings are only two-dimensional. “He told stories that demolished earlier storytelling,” curator Sasha Suda points out. In this exhibit, the stories still blaze with life.
Contact Robert Taylor at rtaylorsf@aol.com.
‘EARLY RUBENS’
Through: Sept. 8, 9:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday
Where: Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, 34th Avenue and Clement Street, San Francisco
Admission: $13-$28; 415-750-3600, legionofhonor.famsf.org
