“On display in Room 16B of the Villanueva Building until February 16, 2025 and benefiting from the collaboration of the Comunidad de Madrid, this exhibition features more than 30 works including paintings executed by Rubens himself, works by his assistants and others resulting from different degrees of collaboration between them. 

Through the figure of Peter Paul Rubens, one of the most prolific and successful painters of the Early Modern age, the exhibition aims to reveal how European artists produced their paintings in workshops, making use of numerous collaborators. 

Shown alongside these paintings is a recreation of Rubens’s workshop which includes all the tools he needed for his artistic activities: canvases and panels, easels, brushes, pigments and binders, palettes and mahlsticks, as well as various elements that evoke the painter himself, such as a cloak and hat inspired by portraits of him.” — Museo Nacional del Prado

“If I had done the entire work with my onw hand, it would be worth twice as much” — Rubens, 1621

“In this room many young painters sat, all painting different pieces which had been sketched out by Mr. Rubens.” — Otto Sperling, 1621 

“It is impossible for me to accept the young man whom you recommend. From all sides applications reach me […]. Some young men remain in Antwerp for several years with other masters, awaiting a vacancy in my studio.” — Rubens, 1611 

“Your excellency must not think that the others are mere copies, for they are so well retouched by my hand that they are hardly to be distinguished from originals.” — Rubens, 1618 

“He never let me understand clearly whether this picture was to be a true and entire original or merely retouched by my hand.” — Rubens, 1621 

 Images courtesy Museo Nacional del Prado.