Peter Paul Rubens was a renowned Flemish artist considered one of the foremost Baroque painters in art history. He is best remembered for his buxom nudes rendered in lush brushstrokes and set amidst swirling compositions. “I paint a woman's big rounded buttocks so that I want to reach out and stroke the dimpled flesh,” the artist once said. Born on June 28, 1577 in Seigen, Westphalia (present-day Germany), he began his artistic apprenticeship with Tobias Verhaecht in Antwerp. He spend the next eight years studying the works of Titian, Tintoretto, and Michelangelo in both Spain and Italy. The young artist received many prestigious portrait commissions, among them his famous Marchesa Brigida Spinola-Doria (1604), in which he depicted the young monarch wearing an intricately detailed neck ruff. After moving back to Antwerp in 1608, Rubens was appointed as the court painter of Archduke Albert and shortly thereafter completed one his most acclaimed works Raising of the Cross (1610), which brought widespread fame. In the years that followed, he acted as important diplomat between the Catholic southern Netherlands and the Protestants in the north of the country. Rubens died on May 30, 1640 in Antwerp, Belgium. Today, his works are held in the collections of Louvre Museum in Paris, the Mauritshuis Royal Picture Gallery in The Hague, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Prado Museum in Madrid, and the National Gallery in London, among several others.