David Jaffe is Senior Curator at the National Gallery,London. He is a world-renowned Rubens scholar, and was the curator of the Gallery's 2003 Titian exhibition；Elizabeth McGrath is Curator of the Photographic Collection and Professor of the History of Art at the Warburg Institute, London. Her many previous books include Rubens: Subjects from History (1997), which won the 1998 Mitchell Prize for the History of Art; Minna Moore Ede is Assistant Curator at the National Gallery.

Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) was a prodigious artist and one of the most cxtraordinary figures of the seventeenth century. An international diplomat, a shrewd businessman, a linguist,an intellectual and the friend of great scholars,Rubens was first and foremost a painter. His genius fbr handling oil paint and inventing wonderfully energetic compositions resulted in works prized by rulers across Europe.

Rubens eventually became thc dominant international painter of his generation, and this book traces his progress from hesitant beginnings in the late 1590s through to the first works made after his triumphant return to Antwerp in 16o8.Most of the eight intervening years were spent in Italy, where he was inspired by classical sculpture, by the work of Renaissance masters-above all Michelangelo and Raphael-and by the revolutionary styles of Caravaggio and other contemporaries.

This book follows the artist's creative engagement with these sources and others,exploring where Rubcns went and, more importantly, what he saw. He studied andcopied avidly, finally transforming his influences into a style that, in paintings such as The Fall of Phaeton (National Gallery of Art, Washington),Ecce Homo (State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg) and Samson and Delilah (The National Gallery,London) is entirely, breathtakingly, his own.  It is possible, through thc drawings, notebook jottings, oil-sketches and finished paintings shown here, to track Rubcns's growing originality, fluency and creativc power. Rubens: A Master in the Making explores the formation of the most exciting and intelligent artist of his time, underlining his incrcdible versatility as a painter.

Sponsor's Foreword

Curator's Acknowledgements

Rubens: A Master in the Making

DAVID JAFFE AND MINNA MOORE EDE

Rubens's 'Pocketbook': An Introduction to the Creative Process

DAVID jaffe

WITH AMANDA BRADLEY

Words and Thoughts in Rubens's Early Drawings

ELIZABETH MCGRATH

The Catalogue

DAVID JAFF

1. EarlyAmbitions as a Battle Painter

2. Rubens on the Move

3. The Reworking of Rome

4. Rubens, the Religious Painter

5. Sequences: Building a Composition

6. Back to Antwerp

Bibliography

Photographic Credits

Index