Friso Lammertse, Alejandro Vergara, Annetje Boersma, Guy Delmarcel and Fiona Healy

Peter Paul Rubens
The Life of Achilles

Design: Gracia Lebbink / Illustrated (colour and b/w), bound, 152 pages, size: 31.5 x 24 cm,
text in English, ISBN 90-5662-327-3 / 978-90-5662-327-2, € 33.00
Also available in a Dutch edition, ISBN 90-5662-326-5 / 978-90-5662-326-5, € 33.00 / OUT OF PRINT

NAi Publishers in association with Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam and the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

Exhibitions:
30 August 2003 - 16 November 2003 Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam
9 December 2003 - 29 February 2004 Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

With his many facets, his virtuosity and prodigious output, Peter Paul Rubens is one of the giants in the history of art. Peter Paul Rubens: The Life of Achillessheds light on a relatively unfamiliar aspect of Rubens's enormous body of work, a series of tapestries featuring the Greek hero Achilles. In the years around 1630 - 1635 Rubens painted the designs for these remarkable tapestries depicting eight decisive moments in the life of Achilles. First he made eight small sketches in oil, some of the finest he ever made. Then the artist and his studio produced large modelli, painted in oil on panels, that further refined his sketches. The exquisite sketches and modelliled finally to magnifications in full-scale cartoons which were placed under the loom for the tapestry weavers to work from. Peter Paul Rubens. The Life of Achillesbrings together for the first time the works that make up the Achilles series, scattered as they are among various public and private collections throughout the world. Here the process from sketch to tapestry is followed in magnificent colour illustrations. Curator Friso Lammertse describes the genesis of the series, the Flemish art historian Guy Delmarcel then probes further in his essay into the history of the tapestries and art historian Fiona Healy sheds light on the iconography of the Achilles series. By concentrating on a series of works, the book throws new light on this master and his working methods.