Peter Paul Rubens

Rubens ran a workshop the size of a small factory and was also a working diplomat, fluent in several languages, trusted with negotiations between Spain and England. Painting was one part of a very busy life, which makes the volume of output harder to explain rather than easier.

The pictures move. Bodies twist, fabric flies, light catches flesh in warm reds and creams. Eight years in Italy studying Titian and antiquity gave him the foundation, and he never stopped copying older painters to learn from them.

The workshop system means authorship varies. He would paint the sketch and the key passages, assistants including a young Van Dyck did the rest, and prices reflected how much was his hand. The late landscapes and the paintings of his second wife Hélène Fourment, made for himself rather than for clients, are looser and more personal than anything commissioned.