Rubens, The Master Of X-Rated Art

Peter Paul Rubens, Persus Liberating Andromeda

A neat article via Arts & Letters Daily about Peter Paul Rubens, as a master of female nudes paintings but also as someone with a much darker side to his psychology.

Rubens wasn't simply an admirer of innocent feminine plumpness. Like a lot of men with a taste for the failed weight-watcher, he had a thick streak of cruelty running through him. His feelings about women were edgy and confused. In Rubens, particularly in his early years, the taste for the multi-pound nude disguises some very unsettling hungers for sex and violence...