Publisher's Synopsis
"This volume catalogues the paintings and drawings that Ludwig Burchard (1886-1960) gathered under the heading 'Genre Scenes' when planning his catalogue raisonné of Rubens's oeuvre. Not that Rubens has ever been thought of as a genre painter in the conventional sense of the term. Besides, even the individual works assembled here do not accord with the customary definitions of genre painting, a category of subject-matter that was introduced relatively late in the history of art. The famous Garden of Love in the Prado, for example, with its fluttering amoretti, is more accurately described as an allegory. Even the picture in the Louvre frequently referred to as the Kermesse clearly does not reproduce an actual kermis or any other such event as witnessed by the artist, but is a fictional construct in which precisely observed details are designed to convey a message that is more symbolic than realistic in content. Yet no history of genre p
