Rubens' work radiates energy, expressing a heady sense of life's pleasures. His brilliant colours and inexhaustible imagination glorify the world in all its splendour.
Rubens exercised a powerful influence on later painters: his heroic idylls are echoed in the scenes galantes of Antoine Watteau and his hunting scenes in the work of Eugene Delacroix, while his paintings hymning the opulent beauty of the female figure lead in direct line to the nudes of Auguste Renoir.