Kristin Lohse Belkin

Background

Kristin Belkin was born in 1939, in the United States

Career

Kristin Lohse Belkin is an art historian who has written on the work of Peter Paul Rubens, a celebrated Flemish painter of the seventeenth century. In her first work, The Costume Book, Belkin catalogues the drawings Rubens made in preparation for some of his large historical paintings, which demonstrate the artist's determination to capture with historical accuracy colors, armor, and women's headdresses. Generously illustrated with Rubens's own sketches and accompanying notes, The Costume Book traces and illustrates the varied sources of many of Rubens's figure designs.

In Belkin's biography, Rubens, the author focuses on the artist's life experiences as they informed the style and content of his art. Belkin introduces the reader to the future artist's early family life, and sketches in the political and religious controversies that raged in the Netherlands during Rubens's lifetime. Rubens's extended visits to Italy, where he absorbed the influences of such masters of the Italian Renaissance as Titian, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Correggio, are documented, and his career as a Flemish diplomat to several courts in Europe is surveyed for its influence on his portrayal of women as peacemakers in a time of political and social upheaval.

Achievements

• Kristin Belkin is best known for her biographical books: The Costume Book (1978) and Rubens (1998).

Works

More photos

• book

  • Costume Book

    (The Costume Book is a sketch-book by Rubens in the Britis...)

    1978
  • Rubens 1999
  • A House of Art: Rubens as Collector 2004

References

• Contemporary Authors A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, and Other Fields
  2008