Rubens: The Blooming of a Genius

The exhibition "Rubens. The Blooming of a Genius" explores for the first time the formative years of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), master of Flemish Baroque and a universal figure in the history of art. Rather than presenting genius as something sudden, it shows how Rubens’s artistic identity developed gradually through the classical tradition, the influence of major Italian masters, and the practical knowledge he absorbed from his surroundings. The exhibition follows his training in the workshops of Tobias Verhaecht, Adam van Noort, and Otto van Veen, his admission as a master to the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1598, and his later work for the court. It also examines the wider artistic and cultural world that shaped him, especially the Antwerp milieu of the late sixteenth century. Works linked to leading figures such as Maerten de Vos, Willem Key, Adriaen Thomasz. Key, Crispijn van den Broeck, and Pieter Pourbus II are included, alongside a rare opportunity to see works by Adam van Noort in a Spanish public institution and the largest group of paintings by Otto van Veen assembled in an exhibition context, extending beyond the emblem books for which he is best known. The presentation also features notable discoveries and exceptional loans, including one of the paintings from Pietro Facchetti’s "Creation" series, which Rubens is believed to have restored after damage during its transfer from Mantua to the court of Philip III in Valladolid. It also includes an oil sketch for the high altar of the Chiesa Nuova in Rome, little known to Spanish audiences, and a possible identification, in a surviving fragment, of part of the lost composition of Rubens’s "The Continence of Scipio".