Peter Paul Rubens's pastoral images

This dissertation examines Rubens's pastoral images. These images were created between the early 1620s and the late 1630s. They include pastoral landscapes, portraits in pastoral dress, as well as two pastoral scenes, one of which was inspired by a literary text. The goal of this dissertation is to contextualize as well as to define Rubens's pastoral imagery.;Chapter one provides a visual analysis of Rubens's pastoral images aiming to identify what makes them a coherent pictorial group. This chapter also establishes the pictorial pastoral production, on which Rubens drew, in the Southern Netherlands, in Italy and in France. It focuses on examples dating before Rubens's own production, from the sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries, but also on some images dating after the 1630s. In chapter two I discuss certain theoretical debates on the pastoral during the Renaissance and the seventeenth century in the Netherlands, Italy, and France. I include both artistic and literary theories on the pastoral genre, involving the issue of the definition of the pastoral; and of its position in the hierarchy of genres. Chapter three addresses the question of the definition of Rubens's pastorals by testing them against twentieth-century artistic and literary theories on the nature of this genre, as well as against certain other of his images. Chapter four examines more closely the pastoral in the Southern Netherlands. It includes the local literary pastoral production, the presence of pastoral literature in local libraries, and the manifestations of the pastoral especially at the Brussels court. It also raises the issue of Rubens's own garden and of his library, as further evidence for his personal interest in the pastoral genre.;By situating Rubens's pastorals within a broader European and a local Southern-Netherlandish context, his choice of this genre is provided with a strong foundation on the artistic, literary and cultural concerns of his time. By defining the particular character of these images, Rubens's understanding of the pastoral tradition can be highlighted against certain too inclusive modern conceptions of the pastoral genre.