Triumph and Taste

Peter Paul Rubens was a prodigious artist and one of the most extraordinary figures of the 17th century. Europe’s kings and princes prized his vibrant, colourful and often voluptuous works, which included altarpieces and other religious pictures; portraits; hunting and mythological scenes. The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida, possesses one of America’s premier and diverse collections of paintings by Rubens, including five extraordinary, full-scale painted models for the Triumph of the Eucharist tapestry series; Pausias and Glycera, created in collaboration with the flower painter Osias Beert; a painted sketch for a tapestry wittily depicting Achilles dipped in the Styx; the tragic and brilliantly coloured Departure of Lot and his Family from Sodom; and an exuberant, bravura portrait of the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand, ruler of the Southern Netherlands. This lavishly illustrated publication will introduce the artist and these outstanding works, shed new light on their meanings, functions and facture, and share original perspectives on their provenance and place in the taste of John Ringling and the museum’s first director, A. Everett ‘Chick’ Austin, Jr.

Other titles published by Scala for the Ringling Museum incude: Ca d’Zan: Ringling’s Venetian Palace: Art Spaces, Grounds and Gardens: Art Spaces, The Historic Asolo Theatre: Art Spaces, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art: Director’s Choice, Paolo Veronese, and R. Luke DuBois.