Rubens House completes restoration of portico and garden pavilion

The imposing portico and garden pavilion at the Rubens House can now be viewed again by the public. After a year and a half, their restoration is complete. A combination of protective and conservation measures has given the portico and garden pavilion back their splendour, while the meticulous treatment of the sculptural details does full justice to them once more. The restored portico is protected by a glass butterfly awning to prevent erosion of the stone and to ward off pollution. Visitors can now enter Rubens’s home again in the way he intended: with a spectacular view of the portico and garden pavilion. He designed both features himself, making them rare evidence of Rubens as an architect.

The garden pavilion and the portico in the style of a triumphal arch at the Rubens House in Antwerp were designed entirely by Peter Paul Rubens himself and are among the few traces anywhere in the world of the master as an architect. Following his return from Italy in 1608, Rubens introduced Antwerp to his fascination for classical and contemporary Italian architecture. He and his first wife Isabella Brant purchased a building and the accompanying land on the Wapper in Antwerp in 1610 and converted it into a self-designed Italian palazetto complete with semi-circular sculpture gallery, studio and a beautiful garden. Rubens only put his architectural ideas into practice once, but in doing so, he revealed a thorough knowledge of the subject. The improvements lent his home the air of an Italian palazzo and embodied Rubens’s artistic ideals: the art of Roman Antiquity and the Italian Renaissance.