Study of Two Heads

Peter Paul Rubens Flemish

Not on view

Rubens painted studies of heads after live models and artistic sources, creating a cast of characters that served in turn as models for figures in religious and mythological works. The main figure here became a saint in a great altarpiece of 1609, a high priest in 1612, and a river god, then Plato (in an engraving after Rubens) in about 1615. The other head, derived from one by Mantegna, had its own artistic afterlife. Rubens’s disciples Jacob Jordaens and especially Van Dyck followed the same practice.

Study of Two Heads, Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, Siegen 1577–1640 Antwerp), Oil on wood

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