In Search of Plump Women

The Denver Art Museum is running an exhibit called "Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools - 300 Years of Flemish Masterworks."  Their advertisement prominently displays a painting by Peter Paul Rubens featuring a sailor and a plump woman.  The sailor appears to have the determined focus of a heat-seeking missile.

 

And so, off I merrily traipsed to the Denver Art Museum to see other Rubens masterworks.  Alas, I was to be disappointed.  There were only three paintings by Rubens out of the sixty paintings on display, and only the picture above and his mythological painting "Diana Hunting with Her Nymphs" showed any hint of Rubens's virtuosity with the ample female form.  The chaste goddess of the hunt is a sturdy girl, built more like a linebacker than a ballerina.

The only other painting that might be considered modestly rubenesque was "The Serenade" by Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), ca. 1640-1645.  The young Jordaens occasionally worked for Rubens and was strongly influenced by Rubens's techniques (and taste in models).

Jordaens painted himself into this picture.  He is the middle musician, apparently engaged in mortal combat with the Flemish pipes, a member of the bagpipe family.

The rest of the exhibit consisted of Biblical or mythological subjects, portraits, and nature scenes -- all of them interesting in their own right.  There were a few plump women scattered about as scenery in some of the mythological pictures.

I was intrigued by the dog in this boyhood portrait of William II, Prince of Orange, by Anthony van Dyck.  The dog has a strangely elongated and supple neck, allowing him to look behind himself like a goose.