Rubens and the Human Body

"Did contemporary audiences recognise the sensuously painted 'Rubensian body' as a particular, if not peculiar, artistic repertoire? How can we best understand seventeenth-century practises of reading and viewing the Rubensian body? Can our criteria for eroticism be linked with that of Rubens? Was the body a fluid category for Rubens and where does the boundary of the human body lie? Through these investigative questions, this volume will lead to a detailed evaluation about the paradigmatic status of the Rubensian body and will question whether we are justified in stressing its singularity within seventeenth-century Flemish and the broader early modern European visual culture."--From backcover