Rubens is in Las Vegas! The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum at the Venetian presents "Rubens and his age" until July 31st.

Two weeks ago I took this picture at the Venetian. What you see is not the exhibition itself but only the corridor leading to it.

Many
paintings by the famous Flemish baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) are at the State Hermitage museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. That is because tsarina Catharina the Great (1729–1796) was an admirer of Flemish paintings. The cooperation between the New York Guggenheim and the Hermitage, resulting in the Guggenheim Hermitage Las Vegas, has made it possible to put some 50 works of Rubens and his colleagues and pupils Anthony van Dyck, Jacob Jordaens, Jacob Van Oost the Elder, Adriaen van Utrecht and Frans Snyders on display.

More than 360 years after his death, Rubens still has followers. The most notible of these is the contemporary Flemish painter Hans Laagland (b. 1965), who has trained himself to work with the traditional skills of painters like Rubens. He has participated in a scientific project to recreate the white paint that characterises the works of that other great painter, Rembrandt van Rijn. Laagland paints copies of existing Rubens paintings, but also formal and ceremonial portraits on demand, as well as other figurative work in the style of Rubens.

And while we are at it, today's newspapers are reporting that the authenticity of up to 60 paintings attributed to Rubens has come under doubt.