Last Supper - Pourbus

by Old Masters

Size Group: C

Artist - Frans Pourbus II

Giclee on Canvas
Price includes frame.
24x18" $475
12x16" $300
9x12" $175

Frans Pourbus the Younger was born in Belgium in 1569, son and grandson of two successful painters, father Frans Pourbus I and grandfather Pieter Pourbus. He was only twelve years old when his father died. In his early 20’s he rose to the rather lofty and prestigious position of court painter for the royal court of Archduke Albert of Brussels. It was there that he got his big break.
In 1600 he moved to Mantua to become the court painter to Vincenzo Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua. At about the same time the Duke employed another Flemish painter to his court, the soon-to-be world renowned Peter Paul Rubens. Pourbus and Rubens worked as colleagues from 1600 to 1608. In 1609 Frans Pourbus was sent to Paris by the Duke to do some painting for Henry IV of France and Queen Maria de Medici. The Queen specifically asked the Duke for the permanent services of Pourbus and the Duke agreed.
One of his portraits of Marie de Medici hangs in the Chicago Art Institute and hundreds of examples of his works grace private collections and museums around the world. He did not rise to the eminence of his contemporary, Peter Paul Rubens, but his work is looked upon favorably by the art world.
The religious persuasion of the Pourbus family was Protestant. It was during this time in history that great strife arose between the French Roman Catholics and a group of Protestant followers of John Calvin and the Reformed Church (Huguenots). It is believed that Pourbus himself did not outwardly proclaim his religious beliefs, but moved his family around 1615 away from this strife into the Rheinlandpfalz of western Germany, where the family name became, and remains to this day, the German version, Purpus. Frans himself returned to Paris and remained there as court painter until his death in Paris in 1622.