RUBENS

Much as one bemoans the lack of color in the handsome black and white reproductions of the major paintings by that painter whose works were bathed in color, this biography of Peter Paul Rubens is one of considerable stature and a worthy addition to preceding biographies on the lives of great artists, Goya, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Michel angelo and Leonardo da Vinci by Elizabeth Ripley. Coordination between text and pictures is outstandingly good. Few art books place an artist's works chronologically. Still fewer correlate the incidents of the artist's life with the reproductions on adjoining pages. The treatment so accorded Rubens' life is doubly enlightening and doubly interesting. The eventful life of the twice married painter, the happiness of his days first with Isabella Brandt as court painter to Archduke Albert in Brussels, with the record he left on canvas, through his later marriage to Helena Fourmient and the charming family portraits inspired by both marriages are all included in a handsome tasteful book which adults will find of interest too.