I think this exhibition is too large - unnecessarily so to convey incisively the legacy of Rubens. Indeed, it is almost self-defeating as the legacy gets lost in the volume of the legacees. To be honest, Rubens is not my cup of tea anyway and I kept having flashbacks of the incredible Rembrandt exhibition at the National Gallery. Rembrandt (1606-69) was surely noteworthy for the simple, clean compositions of often single figures, conveying with genius their mood and emotion - the daydreaming son, the stoic older ladies. In contrast, the Rubens (1577-1640) paintings in the RA exhibition are so baroque in their style that I find them quite daft.
No doubt his influence was vast, his technique masterful and his self-assurance supreme but this is not an exhibition I will be revisiting on a regular basis.
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