The Rubens Garden - by Klara Alen (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The book presents archival research on the reconstructed Rubens Garden in Antwerp, highlighting its historical context, main plants, and artistic connections to Rubens and his contemporaries. The publication coincides with the opening of the newly created Rubens Garden at the Rubens House in Antwerp in August 2024

The garden of the Rubens House is a hidden gem in the heart of Antwerp. This is the place where the world-famous artist lived with his family and entourage and could relax. The garden has been reconstructed and, thanks to advice from fashion designer Dries Van Noten, provides year-round color, season after season. The design hearkens back to plant species from Rubens' time, including columbine, marigolds and citrus plants.

This book presents the results of years of archive research that went into the reconstruction of The Rubens Garden, describes the historical context and provides an overview of the main flowers and plants and their story. With beautiful details from floral still lifes and other works of Rubens and his contemporaries, this richly illustrated book reveals the beauty of the unique garden of the Rubens House in Antwerp. In addition, it offers a glimpse of little-known historical material about this magical garden and city gardens in Antwerp in the time of Rubens.

About the Author

Klara Alen is research curator of the historical garden of the Rubenshuis in Antwerp and researcher for Rubens' country estate 'Het Steen' in Elewijt. She studied art history at the University of Leuven and art market studies at the VU Amsterdam. Klara obtained her PhD in art history in the spring of 2017 as a researcher of Project Cornelia (www.projectcornelia.be). Her doctoral dissertation takes an inclusive look at the Antwerp tapestry industry (1660-1720) through art historical research, archival research, data visualization and data analysis. The project was supervised by Koen Brosens and co-supervised by Katlijne Van der Stighelen, Neil de Marchi, Hans J. Van Miegroet and Paul McLean. Klara has published papers and given lectures on the early development of still life painting in the Northern and Southern Netherlands, 17th century Antwerp horticulture, Rubens' garden, women artists and the social and entrepreneurial strategies of early modern artists and art dealers. Together with Sam Segal, Klara is the author of Dutch and Flemish Flower Pieces. Paintings, Drawings and Prints up to the Nineteenth Century (Brill, 2020).