Peter Paul Rubens is not for everyone, his subjects are not necessarily 'pretty' in the traditional sense, but once you look beyond the surface it is difficult not to be awed by the masterful painterly quality found in all of his works. It is interesting to realize that Rubens is one of the few painters around whose style and technique is so unique that there are rarely authenticity issues involving his paintings. The above detail is from one of his famous naughty paintings at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, The Drunken Silen. The Rubens gallery at the Alte Pinakothek is truly amazing, and I'll always remember one specific day many years ago:
I used to work in the conservation department in the early 1990s, working on Old Master paintings for the Alte Pinakothek at the Doerner Institut (where the conservation studios are located). One afternoon, a security guard interrupts our meeting, saying that they had a problem over at the Alte Pinakothek, and they didn't know how to deal with it. A visitor had walked into the large Rubens gallery, started to undress until split-naked, put his clothes neatly into a corner of the gallery, and then quietly strolled through the room, studying each painting intensely. The security guards and other visitors were rather amused, and so were we. Finally he was told that it wouldn't be really appropriate to walk around naked in a museum to which he he replied that there shouldn't be a problem since everybody else in the room was naked (in Rubens' paintings), but in the end he obliged.