Rubens and the Human Body

Edited by Cordula van Wyhe

Book cover: Rubens and the Human Body

Extent: 366 pages

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Subjects: Art & Art History

Series: Body in Art

Series volume number: 3

Language: English

Paperback (Published)

(June 2018)

ISBN: 9782503577753

Price: $138.00

In stock

This book is the first comprehensive investigation of the most paradigmatic aspect of Baroque visual culture: the Rubensian nude.


Did contemporary audiences recognise the sensuously painted ‘Rubensian body’ as a particular, if not peculiar, artistic repertoire? How can we best understand seventeenth-century practises of reading and viewing the Rubensian body? Can our criteria for eroticism be linked with that of Rubens? Was the body a ‘fluid’ category for Rubens and where does the boundary of the human body lie? It is hoped that these investigative questions will lead to a detailed evaluation about the paradigmatic status of the Rubensian body and whether we are justified in stressing its singularity within seventeenth-century Flemish and the broader early modern European visual culture.

  • Edited by Cordula van Wyhe