There is a delicious type of miniature pancake, the recipe for which dates back to the 16th century, that tourists are offered in the Netherlands. They are called poffertjes and are quite unlike our thin, abstemious Shrove Tuesday version. Looking like puffed-up feather pillows, they are dusted with sugar, glazed with melted butter and drizzled with syrup. On particularly cold days, a measure of brandy might find its way into the batter. These culinary delights were undoubtedly much loved by those generously proportioned women painted by the great Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens — with their creased and creamy flesh, bosoms pulled in and pushed up by corsets, their plump elbows and, above all, their soft, eiderdown bottoms. The fact is that Rubens was not rebelling against a 17th-century Size Six ideal to champion the ‘larger lady’. Back then, there was no Size Six ideal; pictured above is his work, Venus at the Mirror . Indeed, the word ‘Rubenesque’ has come to be used to describe any woman of a certain size and softness. The comedian Dawn French has, self-deprecatingly, joked: ‘If I had been around when Rubens was painting, I would have been revered as a fabulous model. Kate Moss? She’d have been the paintbrush.’ It’s a good line, but it is to misunderstand Rubens if he is seen today as a man who encouraged women to embrace their curves, learn to love their jiggly bits and never say no to a second poffertje. The fact is that Rubens was not rebelling against a 17th-century Size Six ideal to champion the ‘larger lady’. Back then, there was no Size Six ideal. What Rubens revelled in was sheer abundance. He was attracted by wealth, titles, courtly grace, sumptuous fabrics, bounty, beauty, palaces, friends in high places, travel, fountains, sweeping lawns, manicured gardens and banqueting houses. As you can see at a new exhibition, Rubens And His Legacy, at the Royal Academy in London, his enthusiasm for delicious, wantonly plump female flesh was part of this taste for luxury and plenty. Born in 1577 into an affluent, respected family — his father was a lawyer — and brought up in Antwerp, Rubens was appointed a page to a noblewoman, Marguerite de Lalaing d’Arenberg, Comtesse de Ligne, after finishing his schooling. This early association with courtly manners helped to make him a hit with aristocratic and royal patrons after he trained as a painter. Rubens, who served not only as a court painter but also as a diplomat, was dubbed ‘the prince of painters and painter of princes’; still, he is best remembered for his plump and inviting nudes . His client list reads like a who’s who of European society: counts, dukes and archdukes, earls and knights, King Philip IV of Spain and our own King Charles I. Rubens, who served not only as a court painter but also as a diplomat, was dubbed ‘the prince of painters and painter of princes’. Still, he is best remembered for his plump and inviting nudes. We cannot blame the poffertjes alone, for the Low Countries at that time were truly a place of guzzling and gluttony. One historian remarked in 1665 that the land ‘overflows with butter, cheese and milk’. They weren’t the half of it. Sugar arrived on ships from Brazil. Traditional waffles and pancakes, once served plain, were now dusted with sugar and caramelised sauces. Cakes and biscuits were studded with candied fruit, crystallised ginger or molasses. Almond tarts and rosewater flavoured marzipan were served on special occasions. Honey cakes and caramel were daily treats. There were dessert creams made with milk, sugar, cinnamon, eggs, and apples. One chronicler lists 41 types of biscuit, from those made with aniseed to others baked with cherries. Marrons glacés (sugared chestnuts) were imported from France. Whenever gluttons felt sated, they tucked into salads of imported fruits — the rich could afford pineapples, while middle-class burghers made do with melons, oranges and grapes. Any pretence at virtue, however, was undone by a tendency to cover the grapes in treacle. Reubens painting the Massacre Of The Innocents; . Tooth decay was a terrible problem. The artist Rembrandt van Rijn, who saw the older Rubens as his great rival, lost almost all his teeth in later life because of his weakness for sugar. There was even a word for it: lekkerheid — a craving for sweetness or tastiness. A typical day would begin with breakfast — the first of four meals — and it might include three types of bread (a rye loaf, a wheaten one and a sweeter pastry baked with fruits and sugared spices) and five types of cheese. Two varieties of butter would be served along with fish, sliced and salted ox or pork, buttermilk, hot chocolate, tea, and the leftovers of the previous night’s dinner. The wealthiest in society might have had a game or meat pie if they were still feeling peckish. In summer, cherries and berries would be eaten with sweet or sour cream. Everyone drank beer at breakfast — it was thought the most wholesome drink for men, women and children and consumed in vast quantities throughout the day. Lunch was a four-course affair. A soup to start, usually made from vegetables and bacon cooked in milk. For main, a meat or fish dish with salad or fruit to follow. Then pudding proper: waffles, the inevitable pancakes or rice pudding. At 3pm there was bread, cheese, almonds, raisins, a selection of pastries, tea and hot or cold beer. Dinner — even gourmands might begin to groan at this point — was much the same as lunch, with butter, bread, cheese, wine sweetened with cinnamon and sugar, and a milky porridge. One hugely popular dish, sometimes called olipotrigo but given different names across the Low Countries, was a hotpot made with slow-cooked capon, lamb, minced veal, rams’ testicles, beef, calves’ heads, coxcombs, sausage, marrowbone, artichokes, chicory, endive, asparagus and game birds, mixed with four or five egg yolks, wine, vinegar and melted butter, served with roasted chestnuts. Is it any wonder the English botanist and parson John Ray, who travelled in the Low Countries in the 17th century, wrote that men and women he encountered were ‘almost always eating as they travel, whether by boat, coach or wagon’ and that they were ‘for the most part big-boned and gross-bodied’? For his part, Rubens looked on his countrywomen with a more sympathetic eye than Parson Ray. A note on the wall at the Royal Academy exhibition reads: ‘Rubens enjoyed painting buxom nudes.’ This is extreme understatement. No artist painted poffertjes-plumped flesh with the sensuous joy of Rubens. In his double-portrait of the amorous god Pan and the chaste nymph Syrinx (included in the exhibition), he paints an inch-wide crease above Syrinx’s navel. Just enough to be pinched between thumb and forefinger. You can see why the satyr Pan might want to get his hands on this buttermilk-and-beer-fed maiden. Reubens paiting, Cain Slaying Abel above; Reubens And His Legacy is at the Royal Academy from this Saturday until April 10 . The art historian Kenneth Clark, presenter of the sweeping BBC series Civilisation, most elegantly took the measure of Rubens when he wrote in his 1956 book The Nude: ‘Why do we burn with indignation when we hear people who believe themselves to have good taste dismissing Rubens as a painter of fat naked women, and even applying the epithet vulgar? What is it, in addition to sheer pictorial skill, that makes his nudes noble and life-giving creations?’ His answer is simple: ‘The golden hair and swelling bosoms of his Graces are hymns of thanksgiving for abundance, and they are placed before us with the same unselfconscious piety as the sheaves of corn and piled-up pumpkins which decorate a village church at Harvest Festival.’ ‘Hymns of thanksgiving for abundance’ — that is what you must think when you see Rubens’ women with their dimpled thighs, the soft, soufflé folds of their stomachs and their yielding flesh. The last painting in the exhibition is Rubens’ Venus Frigida. A doleful Venus sits hunched and hungry. Her son, Cupid, cowers with neither the will nor energy to pick up his bow and arrow to make his customary mischief. Behind them, a satyr approaches, carrying a cornucopia of wheat and fruit. It was inspired by a line from the Roman playwright Terence: ‘Love withers without food and drink.’ You might say the same about Rubens’ voluptuous and unrepentantly indulgent art. * Rubens And His Legacy is at the Royal Academy from this Saturday until April 10. For tickets call 0207 300 8000 or go to royalacademy.org.uk .
The word 'Rubenesque' is used to describe any woman of a certain size .
Rubens enthusiasm for plump females was part of his taste for luxury .
In 1665 the land overflowed with 'butter, cheese and milk', a historian noted .
His work is on display at London's Royal Academy of the Arts until April .
There is a delicious type of miniature pancake, the recipe for which dates back to the 16th century, that tourists are offered in the Netherlands. They are called poffertjes and are quite unlike our thin, abstemious Shrove Tuesday version. Looking like puffed-up feather pillows, they are dusted with sugar, glazed with melted butter and drizzled with syrup. On particularly cold days, a measure of brandy might find its way into the batter. These culinary delights were undoubtedly much loved by those generously proportioned women painted by the great Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens — with their creased and creamy flesh, bosoms pulled in and pushed up by corsets, their plump elbows and, above all, their soft, eiderdown bottoms. The fact is that Rubens was not rebelling against a 17th-century Size Six ideal to champion the ‘larger lady’. Back then, there was no Size Six ideal; pictured above is his work, Venus at the Mirror . Indeed, the word ‘Rubenesque’ has come to be used to describe any woman of a certain size and softness. The comedian Dawn French has, self-deprecatingly, joked: ‘If I had been around when Rubens was painting, I would have been revered as a fabulous model. Kate Moss? She’d have been the paintbrush.’ It’s a good line, but it is to misunderstand Rubens if he is seen today as a man who encouraged women to embrace their curves, learn to love their jiggly bits and never say no to a second poffertje. The fact is that Rubens was not rebelling against a 17th-century Size Six ideal to champion the ‘larger lady’. Back then, there was no Size Six ideal. What Rubens revelled in was sheer abundance. He was attracted by wealth, titles, courtly grace, sumptuous fabrics, bounty, beauty, palaces, friends in high places, travel, fountains, sweeping lawns, manicured gardens and banqueting houses. As you can see at a new exhibition, Rubens And His Legacy, at the Royal Academy in London, his enthusiasm for delicious, wantonly plump female flesh was part of this taste for luxury and plenty. Born in 1577 into an affluent, respected family — his father was a lawyer — and brought up in Antwerp, Rubens was appointed a page to a noblewoman, Marguerite de Lalaing d’Arenberg, Comtesse de Ligne, after finishing his schooling. This early association with courtly manners helped to make him a hit with aristocratic and royal patrons after he trained as a painter. Rubens, who served not only as a court painter but also as a diplomat, was dubbed ‘the prince of painters and painter of princes’; still, he is best remembered for his plump and inviting nudes . His client list reads like a who’s who of European society: counts, dukes and archdukes, earls and knights, King Philip IV of Spain and our own King Charles I. Rubens, who served not only as a court painter but also as a diplomat, was dubbed ‘the prince of painters and painter of princes’. Still, he is best remembered for his plump and inviting nudes. We cannot blame the poffertjes alone, for the Low Countries at that time were truly a place of guzzling and gluttony. One historian remarked in 1665 that the land ‘overflows with butter, cheese and milk’. They weren’t the half of it. Sugar arrived on ships from Brazil. Traditional waffles and pancakes, once served plain, were now dusted with sugar and caramelised sauces. Cakes and biscuits were studded with candied fruit, crystallised ginger or molasses. Almond tarts and rosewater flavoured marzipan were served on special occasions. Honey cakes and caramel were daily treats. There were dessert creams made with milk, sugar, cinnamon, eggs, and apples. One chronicler lists 41 types of biscuit, from those made with aniseed to others baked with cherries. Marrons glacés (sugared chestnuts) were imported from France. Whenever gluttons felt sated, they tucked into salads of imported fruits — the rich could afford pineapples, while middle-class burghers made do with melons, oranges and grapes. Any pretence at virtue, however, was undone by a tendency to cover the grapes in treacle. Reubens painting the Massacre Of The Innocents; . Tooth decay was a terrible problem. The artist Rembrandt van Rijn, who saw the older Rubens as his great rival, lost almost all his teeth in later life because of his weakness for sugar. There was even a word for it: lekkerheid — a craving for sweetness or tastiness. A typical day would begin with breakfast — the first of four meals — and it might include three types of bread (a rye loaf, a wheaten one and a sweeter pastry baked with fruits and sugared spices) and five types of cheese. Two varieties of butter would be served along with fish, sliced and salted ox or pork, buttermilk, hot chocolate, tea, and the leftovers of the previous night’s dinner. The wealthiest in society might have had a game or meat pie if they were still feeling peckish. In summer, cherries and berries would be eaten with sweet or sour cream. Everyone drank beer at breakfast — it was thought the most wholesome drink for men, women and children and consumed in vast quantities throughout the day. Lunch was a four-course affair. A soup to start, usually made from vegetables and bacon cooked in milk. For main, a meat or fish dish with salad or fruit to follow. Then pudding proper: waffles, the inevitable pancakes or rice pudding. At 3pm there was bread, cheese, almonds, raisins, a selection of pastries, tea and hot or cold beer. Dinner — even gourmands might begin to groan at this point — was much the same as lunch, with butter, bread, cheese, wine sweetened with cinnamon and sugar, and a milky porridge. One hugely popular dish, sometimes called olipotrigo but given different names across the Low Countries, was a hotpot made with slow-cooked capon, lamb, minced veal, rams’ testicles, beef, calves’ heads, coxcombs, sausage, marrowbone, artichokes, chicory, endive, asparagus and game birds, mixed with four or five egg yolks, wine, vinegar and melted butter, served with roasted chestnuts. Is it any wonder the English botanist and parson John Ray, who travelled in the Low Countries in the 17th century, wrote that men and women he encountered were ‘almost always eating as they travel, whether by boat, coach or wagon’ and that they were ‘for the most part big-boned and gross-bodied’? For his part, Rubens looked on his countrywomen with a more sympathetic eye than Parson Ray. A note on the wall at the Royal Academy exhibition reads: ‘Rubens enjoyed painting buxom nudes.’ This is extreme understatement. No artist painted poffertjes-plumped flesh with the sensuous joy of Rubens. In his double-portrait of the amorous god Pan and the chaste nymph Syrinx (included in the exhibition), he paints an inch-wide crease above Syrinx’s navel. Just enough to be pinched between thumb and forefinger. You can see why the satyr Pan might want to get his hands on this buttermilk-and-beer-fed maiden. Reubens paiting, Cain Slaying Abel above; Reubens And His Legacy is at the Royal Academy from this Saturday until April 10 . The art historian Kenneth Clark, presenter of the sweeping BBC series Civilisation, most elegantly took the measure of Rubens when he wrote in his 1956 book The Nude: ‘Why do we burn with indignation when we hear people who believe themselves to have good taste dismissing Rubens as a painter of fat naked women, and even applying the epithet vulgar? What is it, in addition to sheer pictorial skill, that makes his nudes noble and life-giving creations?’ His answer is simple: ‘The golden hair and swelling bosoms of his Graces are hymns of thanksgiving for abundance, and they are placed before us with the same unselfconscious piety as the sheaves of corn and piled-up pumpkins which decorate a village church at Harvest Festival.’ ‘Hymns of thanksgiving for abundance’ — that is what you must think when you see Rubens’ women with their dimpled thighs, the soft, soufflé folds of their stomachs and their yielding flesh. The last painting in the exhibition is Rubens’ Venus Frigida. A doleful Venus sits hunched and hungry. Her son, Cupid, cowers with neither the will nor energy to pick up his bow and arrow to make his customary mischief. Behind them, a satyr approaches, carrying a cornucopia of wheat and fruit. It was inspired by a line from the Roman playwright Terence: ‘Love withers without food and drink.’ You might say the same about Rubens’ voluptuous and unrepentantly indulgent art. * Rubens And His Legacy is at the Royal Academy from this Saturday until April 10. For tickets call 0207 300 8000 or go to royalacademy.org.uk .
‘Rubenesque’ has come to be used to describe any woman of a certain size and softness. The Royal Academy in London, his enthusiasm for delicious, wantonly plump female flesh was part of this taste for luxury and plenty. Born in 1577 1665 that the land ‘overflows with butter, cheese Rubens And His Legacy is at the Royal Academy