The Rubenshuis has partnered with the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA) to organise the research conference Tout le monde pour ma patrie: Rubens and the World. The programme includes presentations by researchers whose subjects intersect with Rubens as a man of the world and with his art and/or career and specific other regions. The inherently international factor of Rubens and Antwerp is the starting premise for putting understudied stories, historical actors and objects in the spotlight. From Rubens as a central artistic persona or a figure who is hovering on the sidelines in broader narratives, the conference aims to bring together a diverse and innovative range of perspectives and methodologies. More information including registration information on Tout le monde pour ma patrie: Rubens and the World | Rubenshuis | Rubenshuis
Program of Speakers:
Monday 5 May 2025
- 8:30 a.m. – Registration and coffee
- 9:00 a.m. – Welcome: Bert Watteeuw
- 9:05 a.m. – Opening Remarks, Abigail D. Newman
SESSION I: Africans in Ink: Archives and Prints
- 9:25 a.m. – Introduction by session chair: Elmer Kolfin
- 9:40 a.m. – Amelia Oliveira, People of African Descent in Early Modern Antwerp
- 10:05 a.m. – Arianna Ray, Inked Africans: Rubens, Race, and the Afro-Diasporic Communities of Antwerp and Amsterdam
- 10:30 a.m. – Discussion
SESSION II: The World of Antiquity
- 11:30 a.m. – Introduction by session chair: Elizabeth McGrath
- 11:45 a.m. – Giovanni Pacini, Through Rubens’s Library: Barbarica Philosophia and its figurative output
- 12:10 p.m. – Yael Rice, The Rubens Vase: Hardstone between the Mughal Court and Europe
- 12:35 p.m. – Discussion
SESSION III: African Antiquities
- 2:00 p.m. – Introduction by session chair: Alexander Marr
- 2:15 p.m. – Adam Sammut, Death on the Nile: Locating Rubens’s Hippopotamus and Crocodile Hunt in early modern Egypt
- 2:40 p.m. – Braden Lee Scott, Roman Aqueducts behind an African Prince: Rubens, the Hafsid Dynasty, and the Infrastructures of Empire
- 3:05 p.m. – Christopher D.M. Atkins and Anna C. Knaap, Rubens and African Kings: An Exhibition in Development
- 3:30 p.m. – Discussion
- 4:30 p.m. – Introduction: Abigail D. Newman
- 4:35 p.m. – Keynote: Aaron Hyman, Rubens’s Global Inattentiveness
Tuesday 6 May 2025
SESSION IV: Global Channels
- 9:00 a.m. – Introduction by session chair: Barbara Uppenkamp
- 9:15 a.m. – Raffaella Morselli, The Itinerarii rerumque Romanorum libri tres by Franciscus Schottus: A Remapping of Rubens’s Artistic Geography in Italy
- 9:40 a.m. – Michiko Fukaya, Disguising as Chinese: The Knowledge of the Jesuit Activity in Asia among Seventeenth-Century Antwerp Artists
- 10:05 a.m. – Stephanie Porras, Before Rubens: The Global Model of Maerten de Vos
- 10:30 a.m. – Discussion
SESSION V: The World’s Matters
- 11:30 a.m. – Introduction by session chair: Anne Woollett
- 11:45 a.m. – Ana Howie, Global Matter and Materiality in Rubens’s Genoese Portraiture
- 12:05 p.m. – Bert Watteeuw, “Twee vercochte globussen” & “eenen Olifants tant”: Circumnavigating a House
- 12:30 p.m. – Discussion
SESSION VI: Rubens’s Resonances
- 2:00 p.m. – Introduction by session chair: Nils Büttner
- 2:15 p.m. – Axel Länger, Rubens Transformed and Revisited: Shah Sulaymanʼs Persian Court Painters Aliquli Jabadar and Muhammad Zaman and What They Made of Rubens
- 2:40 p.m. – Charlotta Krispinsson, Elias Fiigenschough – the Norwegian Painter who only Copied Prints after Rubens
- 3:05 p.m. – Corina Kleinert, Expanding Artistic Horizons and Colonial Connoisseurship: Rubens’s Landscapes in 18th-Century Imperial Britain
- 3:30 p.m. – Discussion
- 4:30 p.m. – Introduction: Bert Watteeuw
- 4:35 p.m. – Keynote: Christine Göttler, “World” in Early Seventeenth-Century Antwerp: Rubens and Ximenes
- 5:35 p.m. – Closing Remarks: Stephanie Schrader and Tine Meganck