Hero and Leander by Peter Paul Reubens - 982 Words

During this semester’s course we have studied various styles of art throughout Europe, and what has intrigued me the most is Baroque art. Baroque, as we have studied it, is a period of artistic style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, in sculpture, and painting. Baroque style began in Rome, Italy in the 1600s and quickly spread throughout Europe. The Baroque style was endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church, in their response to the Protestant Reformation. The Church encouraged artists to create works of art that would connect their audience intellectually and emotionally with religious themes. For my final visual analysis I have chosen Hero and Leander, by Peter Paul Rubens (Figure 1). Rubens created this oil on canvas painting between 1604 and 1605 in Lombardy, Italy. Ruben’s painting features Leander, a youth of Abydos, who used to swim across the waters at night to Sestos on the opposite side to meet his lover Hero, a p riestess of Aphrodite. The painting measures 96 X 127 cm and is currently located in the Yale University Art Museum, in New Haven, Connecticut. (Early mythological paintings) From Hero and Leander we can see the influence that Michelangelo and Titian had on Rubens during his career, in particular, how the human body moves in extreme ways. Emil Kren and Daniel Marx, on the Web Gallery of Art, give a nice summary of the subject of Ruben’s painting. The subject of the painting is a legend according to which