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# Peter Paul Rubens’s Ten Most Famous Paintings
- URL: https://blog.fineartamerica.com/peter-paul-rubens-ten-most-famous-paintings/
- Published: 2026-07-13T10:17:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-21T18:56:28.000Z
- Description: Altarpieces, abductions, lions, queens and one very famous hat: the ten works that made Rubens the great engine of Baroque painting.
- Author: Fine Art America
- Tags: Famous Paintings, Art History

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) was the most successful painter in Europe and, by some distance, the busiest. Born in Germany to a family of Antwerp exiles, he spent eight formative years in Italy studying Titian, Michelangelo, and the antique, then came home in 1608 to a city rebuilding its churches after decades of religious upheaval. The commissions never stopped. He ran a large workshop, produced designs for tapestries, book covers, and civic pageants, and painted with a speed his contemporaries found almost unnerving.

He was also a scholar and a diplomat, fluent in several languages, trusted with delicate missions between the courts of Spain and England — both of which knighted him. What holds the enormous output together is a single quality: movement. Rubens rarely painted anyone standing still. Bodies twist, fabrics billow, horses rear, and light slides across warm flesh in a way no one before him had managed in oil. Here are ten of his most famous paintings.

## [The Raising of the Cross](https://fineartamerica.com/featured/the-raising-of-the-cross-peter-paul-rubens.html?ref=blog.fineartamerica.com)

[![The Raising of the Cross by Peter Paul Rubens](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f8/9a/f89a4877-1344-4bea-9ca0-cb87912cf056/content/images/2026/08/the-raising-of-the-cross-peter-paul-rubens-1.jpg)](https://fineartamerica.com/featured/the-raising-of-the-cross-peter-paul-rubens.html?ref=blog.fineartamerica.com)

Rubens announced himself to Antwerp with this enormous triptych, painted around 1610–11 not long after his return from Italy. The central panel shows a knot of straining men heaving the cross upright, Christ’s body riding a single powerful diagonal that climbs from the bottom right corner to the top of the picture. Every muscle in the group is engaged; the whole scene feels like one physical effort caught halfway through. The debt to Michelangelo and to the Hellenistic sculpture Rubens had studied in Rome is obvious, and so is the difference — this is painted in warm, living color. It hangs today in Antwerp Cathedral.

## [The Descent from the Cross](https://fineartamerica.com/featured/5-descent-from-the-cross-peter-paul-rubens.html?ref=blog.fineartamerica.com)

[![The Descent from the Cross by Peter Paul Rubens](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f8/9a/f89a4877-1344-4bea-9ca0-cb87912cf056/content/images/2026/08/5-descent-from-the-cross-peter-paul-rubens-1.jpg)](https://fineartamerica.com/featured/5-descent-from-the-cross-peter-paul-rubens.html?ref=blog.fineartamerica.com)

Its companion in Antwerp Cathedral, painted 1612–14 for the city’s guild of arquebusiers, is the quieter and more perfect of the two. Christ’s pale body slides down a white sheet into a ring of nine mourners; Saint John, in brilliant red, takes the weight on his shoulder while the Magdalen guides a foot toward the ground. Where The Raising of the Cross explodes outward, this one draws everything inward and downward along a slow diagonal. Rubens keeps the color almost monochrome around that single blaze of red, and the result is one of the most admired altarpieces in Europe.

## [Samson and Delilah](https://fineartamerica.com/featured/4-samson-and-delilah-peter-paul-rubens.html?ref=blog.fineartamerica.com)

[![Samson and Delilah by Peter Paul Rubens](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f8/9a/f89a4877-1344-4bea-9ca0-cb87912cf056/content/images/2026/08/4-samson-and-delilah-peter-paul-rubens-1.jpg)](https://fineartamerica.com/featured/4-samson-and-delilah-peter-paul-rubens.html?ref=blog.fineartamerica.com)

Painted around 1609–10 for Nicolaas Rockox, the burgomaster of Antwerp and one of Rubens’s closest friends, this is a masterclass in candlelight and dread. Samson lies asleep across Delilah’s lap, his back and shoulders enormous in the foreground; a barber leans in with shears while an old woman holds up a candle, and Philistine soldiers wait in the doorway with a torch. Delilah rests one hand lightly on his back — a gesture that reads as tenderness and betrayal at once. Rubens had just come back from Italy, and the debt to Caravaggio’s lighting is unmistakable.

## [The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus](https://fineartamerica.com/featured/2-rape-of-the-daughters-of-leucippus-peter-paul-rubens.html?ref=blog.fineartamerica.com)

[![The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus by Peter Paul Rubens](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f8/9a/f89a4877-1344-4bea-9ca0-cb87912cf056/content/images/2026/08/2-rape-of-the-daughters-of-leucippus-peter-paul-rubens-1.jpg)](https://fineartamerica.com/featured/2-rape-of-the-daughters-of-leucippus-peter-paul-rubens.html?ref=blog.fineartamerica.com)

From about 1618, this is the picture people mean when they talk about the Rubens body. Castor and Pollux, the twin sons of Zeus, seize Phoebe and Hilaeira and haul them onto rearing horses; four figures, two animals, and a great deal of drapery are locked into a single spiralling knot that fills the canvas edge to edge. Nothing is upright and nothing is at rest. The pale, luminous flesh of the two women against the dark horses and bronzed men is the whole point of the color scheme. It hangs in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.

## [Daniel in the Lions’ Den](https://fineartamerica.com/featured/13-daniel-in-the-lions-den-peter-paul-rubens.html?ref=blog.fineartamerica.com)

[![Daniel in the Lions’ Den by Peter Paul Rubens](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f8/9a/f89a4877-1344-4bea-9ca0-cb87912cf056/content/images/2026/08/13-daniel-in-the-lions-den-peter-paul-rubens-1.jpg)](https://fineartamerica.com/featured/13-daniel-in-the-lions-den-peter-paul-rubens.html?ref=blog.fineartamerica.com)

Nine lions prowl, yawn, and stare out of the gloom of a stone pit while Daniel, stripped to a red cloak, clasps his hands and looks up toward the light. Rubens painted it around 1614–16, and the animals are its glory — he had studied lions from life and drawn them repeatedly, and each one here has a distinct pose and temperament. He was proud enough of the picture to offer it in 1618 to the English diplomat Sir Dudley Carleton in exchange for a collection of antique marbles, describing it as entirely by his own hand. It is now in Washington, at the National Gallery of Art.

## [Prometheus Bound](https://fineartamerica.com/featured/4-prometheus-bound-peter-paul-rubens.html?ref=blog.fineartamerica.com)

[![Prometheus Bound by Peter Paul Rubens](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f8/9a/f89a4877-1344-4bea-9ca0-cb87912cf056/content/images/2026/08/4-prometheus-bound-peter-paul-rubens-1.jpg)](https://fineartamerica.com/featured/4-prometheus-bound-peter-paul-rubens.html?ref=blog.fineartamerica.com)

Prometheus, punished for giving fire to mankind, lies chained upside down on his rock while an eagle tears at his liver, one talon planted in his face. Rubens began the picture around 1611 and worked on it for years, and he did not paint all of it himself: the eagle is by his friend Frans Snyders, the finest animal painter in Antwerp, and Rubens said so plainly when he offered the work for sale. The falling body, the violent foreshortening, the sheer closeness of the bird — it is one of the most physically alarming paintings of the seventeenth century. It belongs to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

## [Le Chapeau de Paille (Portrait of Susanna Lunden)](https://fineartamerica.com/featured/portrait-of-susanna-lunden-peter-paul-rubens.html?ref=blog.fineartamerica.com)

[![Le Chapeau de Paille by Peter Paul Rubens](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f8/9a/f89a4877-1344-4bea-9ca0-cb87912cf056/content/images/2026/08/portrait-of-susanna-lunden-peter-paul-rubens-1.jpg)](https://fineartamerica.com/featured/portrait-of-susanna-lunden-peter-paul-rubens.html?ref=blog.fineartamerica.com)

A young woman in a wide black hat looks out at us against a sky of moving cloud, her red sleeves catching the light, a gold chain at her throat. Painted around 1622–25, the sitter is generally identified as Susanna Lunden, sister of Hélène Fourment, whom Rubens would later marry. The famous nickname is a mistake: the hat is felt, not straw. What made the picture legendary is the lighting — Rubens set a face in outdoor shade under a broad brim and made it glow anyway, a problem that fascinated later painters. It hangs in the National Gallery in London.

## [The Garden of Love](https://fineartamerica.com/featured/8-the-garden-of-love-peter-paul-rubens.html?ref=blog.fineartamerica.com)

[![The Garden of Love by Peter Paul Rubens](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f8/9a/f89a4877-1344-4bea-9ca0-cb87912cf056/content/images/2026/08/8-the-garden-of-love-peter-paul-rubens-1.jpg)](https://fineartamerica.com/featured/8-the-garden-of-love-peter-paul-rubens.html?ref=blog.fineartamerica.com)

Around 1633, in his late fifties and newly remarried, Rubens painted this crowded, contented scene of elegantly dressed couples gathered in a garden before a grotto. Cupids tumble through the air, nudging women toward the men; a fountain in the form of Venus spills water at the right. There is no story and no moral — just courtship, silk, and warm afternoon light. Several of the faces resemble Rubens and his young second wife, Hélène Fourment. Philip IV of Spain acquired it and kept it close, and it remains one of the great pleasures of the Prado in Madrid.

## [The Arrival of Marie de’ Medici at Marseilles](https://fineartamerica.com/featured/the-arrival-of-marie-de-medici-in-marseilles-peter-paul-rubens.html?ref=blog.fineartamerica.com)

[![The Arrival of Marie de’ Medici at Marseilles by Peter Paul Rubens](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f8/9a/f89a4877-1344-4bea-9ca0-cb87912cf056/content/images/2026/08/the-arrival-of-marie-de-medici-in-marseilles-peter-paul-rubens-1.jpg)](https://fineartamerica.com/featured/the-arrival-of-marie-de-medici-in-marseilles-peter-paul-rubens.html?ref=blog.fineartamerica.com)

In 1622 the widowed queen of France commissioned twenty-four huge canvases glorifying her life, and Rubens delivered the lot in about three years. This is the most famous of them. Marie steps ashore under a gold canopy, greeted by a helmeted figure of France, while Fame blares overhead and three magnificent water nymphs heave at the mooring ropes below — a whole mythology summoned to dignify a routine disembarkation. The cycle was made for the Luxembourg Palace and now fills a gallery of its own in the Louvre. Few artists have flattered a difficult patron so lavishly, or so well.

## [The Rainbow Landscape](https://fineartamerica.com/featured/the-rainbow-landscape-peter-paul-rubens.html?ref=blog.fineartamerica.com)

[![The Rainbow Landscape by Peter Paul Rubens](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f8/9a/f89a4877-1344-4bea-9ca0-cb87912cf056/content/images/2026/08/the-rainbow-landscape-peter-paul-rubens-1.jpg)](https://fineartamerica.com/featured/the-rainbow-landscape-peter-paul-rubens.html?ref=blog.fineartamerica.com)

In 1635 Rubens bought a country house, the Château de Steen outside Antwerp, and in his last years painted the surrounding countryside for no client at all. The Rainbow Landscape, from around 1636, looks across wet fields after a shower: milkmaids and haymakers at their work, cattle at a ford, ducks on the water, and a rainbow arching over the whole damp, glittering scene. Nothing is idealized and nothing is happening. These late landscapes were admired enormously by Constable and Gainsborough, and helped invent the English tradition of painting weather. It is the finest thing in London’s Wallace Collection.

Rubens painted appetite — for bodies, animals, fabric, weather, and life itself — and four centuries later that energy still fills a room. A Baroque altarpiece brings drama to a stairwell or a study, while the late landscapes and portraits sit comfortably anywhere a little warmth is wanted.

[Shop Peter Paul Rubens prints here](https://fineartamerica.com/art/peter+paul+rubens?ref=blog.fineartamerica.com), and explore the rest of our famous paintings collection for more of the world’s most beloved masterpieces.