Parution : Koenraad Jonckheere, “Rubens’s Questions”, Turnhout, Brepols, 2026

Rubens’s Questions: Religion, Paragone, and the Ontology of Painting explores the pivotal role of doubt in understanding the work of Peter Paul Rubens.

Rubens’s Questions: Religion, Paragone, and the Ontology of Painting explores the pivotal role of doubt in understanding the work of Peter Paul Rubens. Focusing on his easel paintings from the 1610s, this book argues that Rubens engaged with the era’s most pressing intellectual debates without resorting to overt dogma. His works served as open-ended invitations, encouraging viewers to grapple with complex issues of religion, art, and philosophy, offering no definitive answers but instead providing space for personal reflection and recalibration. In contrast to the more direct, polemical writings of his contemporaries, Rubens subtly used his compositional mastery to question the very nature of art—its visual and tactile properties—while navigating the tensions between idolatry and iconoclasm. Rather than aligning with one side of these heated debates, Rubens’ paintings proposed a nuanced middle ground, engaging with the ontological questions of his day and affirming the enduring value of painting itself.

Additionally, this book addresses a significant gap in Rubens scholarship: the almost total absence of Dutch-language sources in the existing literature. By examining these overlooked materials, it reveals a paradigmatic shift in Rubens’ artistic approach, one that was deeply informed by the intellectual climate of the Netherlands.

Koenraad Jonckheere is a professor of Northern Renaissance and Baroque Art at Ghent University. His published works include The Auction of King William’s Paintings, Adriaen Thomasz. Key and Willem Key, Antwerp Art after Iconoclasm, Another History of Art and Instagrammable. He authored several part of the Corpus Rubeninaum Ludwig Burchard.

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Fiammetta Campagnoli

Fiammetta Campagnoli est docteure en histoire de l'art moderne à l'Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Ses recherches se concentrent sur la… Lire la suite

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