The Timken Museum in Balboa Park exhibits European and American art in open, spacious galleries. The rooms are airy and bare except for the paintings or tapestries featured on each wall, and one sculpture in the center room. The lighting is mostly provided naturally through large windows and skylights, and the walls are rose-colored with a textured, triangular pattern embossed. The Dutch Room gallery features portraits and landscape paintings of, among others, the accomplished Flemish artist and diplomat Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), who is characterized by art historians as the most prominent figure of the seventeenth century Flemish Baroque period. Portrait of a Young Man in Armor, ca. 1620, by Peter Paul Rubens, is painted with oil on …show more content…
The frame is thick, gold-colored, and features ornate, foliage-like carvings, thus contributing to the painting’s distinguished appearance. The painting is a portrait of the head and torso of a young European male who appears to be a soldier of high rank, or from an aristocratic background. The subject is at eye level and makes eye contact with the viewer, and wears a stoic facial expression. He is seen from a three-fourths profile angle, with the left side of his face more visible to the viewer. He is dressed in armor and wears a dark uniform contrasted with a bright red sash and white collar. The background is dark brown and similar in shade to the subject’s armor. The light focuses on the subject’s face, drawing attention to his eyes. His pale skin contrasts with rosy cheeks and lips, which are noticeably bright-colored. His …show more content…
During this time period, the Southern Netherlands was ruled by the Catholic Spanish Habsburg monarchy. The northern Dutch Netherlands, which were Protestant, had recently split from the South: these events provided the historical and sociopolitical context of Rubens’s work. Rubens studied in Italy and was influenced by High Renaissance painters such as Michelangelo, Titian, and Caravaggio, as demonstrated by his style of portraiture: “...Rubens drew together the main contributions of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque masters to formulate the first truly pan-European painting style.” His paintings were often religious in nature and emphasized the human body. Rubens preserved the brightness of his paints’ colors by only mixing them lightly, with a pencil: this method is evident in the vivacious colors of Portrait of a Young Man in Armor. The style of Rubens’s paintings such as Portrait of a Young Man in Armor later became the standard for aristocratic portraits. According to the Timken Museum, Portrait of a Young Man in Armor was likely used for reference when painting other works. Rubens was commissioned to paint church frescoes, history paintings, and portraits for the royal and wealthy; he also was the master of a painters’ guild in Antwerp and later worked as a diplomat for the Spanish monarchy. Rubens’s international endeavors contributed to the various European influences apparent in his