The Court Artist; & Rubens: A Double Life

• The Court Artist
  Translated by D. McLintock and Martin Warnke- Cambridge University Press, 1993 - xx + 299 pp. - £35
• Rubens: A Double Life
  by Marie Anne Lescourret. Translated by Elfreda Powell - Alison and Busby, 1993 - ix+ 289 pp. - £16.99

In an ideal world, these two studies would dovetail with one another – the one being a general overview of the development of the court artist and its ennoblement of the artist in the West, the other considering the career of a painter who served courts both as a diplomat and a maker of visual representations. Unfortunately the biography of Rubens by Marie Anne Lescourret is not the match of Martin Warnke's survey, in terms of clarity of argument, modernity in approach, or provision of reliable scholarly footnotes and bibliography.