Rubens - prince of painters

Leonardo Da Vinci is known by the Mona Lisa's smile and the Flemish master Peter-Paul Rubens' trademark is large women. The adjective Rubenesque was coined to describe women who have admirable figures but are rather larger than fashion models.

It is a pity that Rubens (1577-1640) is generally known only in this rather patronising way because in his lifetime he was the most famous and sought-after painter in Europe.

He was the confidant of princes and kings, knighted by Charles II of England. He was also an admirable personality, a family man, and a scholar fluent in several languages and learned in Latin and Greek.

His road to superstardom is charted in a lively exhibition of more than 100 works at the National Gallery in London. The show is full of interest because of the light it throws on the development of the painter as well as having plenty of examples of his flamboyant prowess. The paintings include a newly discovered Massacre of the Innocents, hidden for many years because it was thought too horrible to show. It sold at Sotheby's in 2002 for $76.7 million.

The exhibition is called A Master in the Making because it shows his work as a teenage apprentice to artists in the Low Countries. It includes the splendid body of work he did in his eight years in Italy before he returned to Antwerp where he set up a large studio and employed many assistants.

For the sheer handling of paint, Rubens has a good claim to being the greatest. He could paint anything at any size - often the larger the better - and at virtuoso speed. A splendid feature of the exhibition is the large number of drawings that show his unfaltering hand and the influence of the Italians Michelangelo, Raphael and Tintoretto.

An excellent small copy of Caravaggio's Entombment is testimony to Rubens' admiration for the wild Baroque master and how assiduously Rubens copied the work of artists he felt he could learn from.

Rubens' confidence allowed him to absorb all these influences and evolve a style of his own so effectively that he was soon in demand to do work for the church and for princely patrons.

He was employed by the Duke of Mantua and, in a precedent for his later career, was sent as a diplomat to the court of Spain where he impressed with his talents and personality.

But when he got news that his mother, who had been largely responsible for his upbringing during the rather errant career of his father, was ill, he went back to Antwerp.

The exhibition leads off with a couple of battle pictures full of movement but lacking the grand sweep of similar paintings of his maturity. Judgement of Paris, with its three naked goddesses, is surprisingly awkward, perhaps because the young man was working from engravings rather than real-life models. A second and later Judgement is much more smoothly opulent.

Once he is in Mantua his confidence is unbounded. Easily the biggest painting in the exhibition is Council of the Gods on loan from Prague but originally done for Mantua. It is more than 10m long and contains a host of antique gods, all distinctly characterised. It is a triumph to compare with the big Venetian paintings Rubens admired.

Dominating the exhibition is another big painting that is unmistakably his style, character and force. It is a St George slaying the dragon, an important subject in the Renaissance and later because it exemplified the triumph of Christianity over Paganism.

One of the grandest elements is the saint's horse. Such horses feature everywhere in Rubens' work and he imbues them with tremendous energy expressed in the flowing mane and tail, and the rearing pose. There is also energy in the powerful, chopping gesture of the armoured saint who has already laid the dragon low with his lance. He too is equipped with a kind of mane in the immense plume that flows from his helmet. Rubens follows antique models by showing St George riding without stirrups but the armour is modern. Its hardness and glitter are painted with great verve. The whole is a tumultuous expression of Baroque energy.

The painter's ability to convey sheen on surfaces adds to the glamour of a portrait of a young woman from the important Doria family of Genoa. It must be one of the most striking portraits ever painted. The splendid dress is painted with dashing virtuosity and contrasted with the smooth characterisation of the face.

By the end of his time in Italy Rubens had become a prince of painters. He had command over every form of expression.