Rubens and the flemish

The master, his atelier and his world

With the seventh great exhibition organised by the City of Como in collaboration with a number of important European galleries, for the first time the artistic events at Villa Olmo concentrate on the great paintings of the seventeenth century after six years of attention to the masters of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The spotlight is trained particularly on that absolute master of light and colour and architect of the destiny of the art of Europe, Pieter Paul Rubens, and on the prodigious powers of seduction and the extraordinary vision of the golden age of Flemish Baroque.  The exhibition opens up to us those religious, historical and the mythological themes woven through the works of Rubens. There are 25 masterpieces from the Gemäldegalerie of the Academy of Fine Arts, from the Liechtenstein Museum and from the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna. Antwerp’s master’s works are accompanied at Villa Olmo by 40 paintings from seventeenth century Flemish painters such as Anton Van Dyck, Jacob Jordaens, Gaspar de Crayer, Pieter Boel, Cornelis de Vos and Theodor Thulden.

The Flemish masters



Alongside the masterpieces by Rubens, Villa Olmo is showing 40 canvasses by Flemish painters in his circle, including in particular a number by Anton Van Dyck, friend to and certainly most talented pupil of the master. These include the famous self-portrait of the artist as a young man and the splendid portrait of the young prince in arms, as well also as works by Jacob Jordaens, by Gaspar de Crayer and by Theodor Thulden. 
Among the Flemish paintings that stand out particularly for their skill and attention to detail are the still lifes by Pieter Boel, Jan Fyt and Jan De Heem where we see a mixing of naturalism, the exotic and artifice typical of the noble collections of the kunstkammern so much the rage in the low countries in the seventeenth century. Good examples are the  Still life with a globe, carpet and a cockatoo by Pieter Boel, the Fruit still life with monkey by Jan Fyt and the sumptuous Still life with parrot by Jan Davidsz de Heem. A variant of the still life that was much appreciated in Flanders in the mid sixteen hundreds was the hunting theme, well represented in the exhibition by such works as The white peacock by Jan Weenix (1693) and the two versions of Still life with fowl by Jan Fyt and Melchior Hondecoeter respectively.