Sex, violence and big bums: Rubens and the birth of modern Europe

THE NEW EUROPEAN
By Ian Walker

"The Great Last Judgement" by Peter Paul Rubens (1614 and 1617)

Munich’s art gallery, the Alte Pinakothek, when it was designed in the 1820s, was designed around one painting – Peter Paul Rubens’ The Last Judgement. The painting is huge; it is more than six metres high, almost five metres wide and is one of the largest of all European canvasses. It is huge not just in size, but also in theme. It is Heaven versus Hell, God versus Satan with the damned being dragged down to the depths and the saved being raised up to salvation. When it was painted the Dutch and Spanish were embroiled in the Eighty Years’ War and the Holy Roman Empire was on the verge of the Thirty Years’ War. [More]