Guess the Artist (Detroit Institute of Arts) #30!

Breathtaking. If I had to use a single word to describe this painting – it is breathtaking, inspiring. You can feel the woman’s exhaustion. Yet her love and carry for her children, despite all odds is still very apparent. The elements in this painting keep your eye moving and keep you right there, stuck in their story. Amazing, yes – but can you guess the artist on this one? Answer is below…

A N S W E R :

Saint Ives of Treguier, Patron of Lawyers, Defender of Widows and Orphans, between 1615 and 1616

Peter Paul Rubens, Flemish, 1577-1640

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 113 × 87 inches (287 × 221 cm)
125 × 99 3/4 × 5 1/2 inches (3 m 17.5 × 253.4 × 14 cm)

Founders Society Purchase, Eleanor Clay Ford Fund and the Estate of Feodosy Kogut

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I looked at this painting for a long time. I would love to know more about the story this painting tells. Then I found the next image I took was of a display at the Detroit Institute of Arts explaining this painting in more detail. Whew!

Find the Compassion of a Saint

Peter Paul Rubens shows a widow and her children begging for help from Saint Ives, the patron saint of lawyers. Rubens’s tender representation of the saint, who defended widows and orphans, was new; earlier depictions show Saint Ives by himself, holding a book.

Discover how Rubens invites viewers to connect with Saint Ives’s compassion.

(___ are the words I cannot make out due to lighting)

The angel crowing Saint Ives with a wreath symbolizes divine acknowledgment of a saint’s good deeds.

Red rimmed eyes show ___ anguish and emphasize her sickly yellow skin.

Rubens painted these figures life-sized, which makes them – and their urgency- more real.

The mother and children are barefoot to dramatize their extreme poverty.

Rubens shows Saint Ives bent forward, attentive to the widow and children.

One hand rests on a law book, the other holds the widow’s petition for help suggestion ____ effectiveness

A discarded bishop’s hat represents the high church office Saint Ives declined in order to help people directly.

The Detroit Institute of Arts