Obesity: Rubensian beauty turned into major health problem

The Dutch painter Sir Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 – May 30, 1640), the most famous artist of the Flemish Baroque art school, studied anatomy and medicine to understand the human body and devoted his life to sharing views common among his contemporaries. Rubens believed that physical weakness could lead to spiritual weakness. He painted nudes and highlighted their physical beauty, goodness, temptation, desire, and fertility. His fullfigured women were later called “Rubenesque” or “Rubensian” (1). His most famous “Rubensian” paintings are Venus, Cupid, Bacchus, and Ceres (painted in 1612), Amor and Venus (1614), Venus at the Mirror (1615), and The Three Graces (1635). Today Rubens is more widely known as the painter of “big” women than for his religious and mythological paintings, portraits, self-portraits, and landscapes (2).