Art Talk about Rubens by the London Art Salon

Rubens - Beyond the Cliché and his influence on Rococo, Impressionism and more.

This event is timed to coincide with the Royal Academy 'Rubens and his Legacy' exhibition. Rubens has been celebrated and castigated as the supreme painter of voluptuous female flesh, but the Royal Academy show attempts to demonstrate how Rubens superbly confident mastery of paint made him the "painter's painter", a masterly technician who inspired painters from his own age until ours, including Watteau, Fragonard, Delacroix and Renoir.

A painter of portraits, religious works, narrative paintings and dynastic propaganda, Rubens was the most successful artist of his age. To give a clichéd response to his generously-apportioned ladies is to seriously under-estimate the power of his work. In this salon, Patrick Bade explains why.