Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish painter, draughtsman and diplomat. He is considered the most versatile and influential Northern European artist of the 17th century. Rubens came from a patrician family, his father being secretary to William of Orange's second wife, Anne of Saxony. Peter Paul, too, was a page in the service of a noblewoman after having finished school. He learned Latin, Italian and French, which was useful in his later work as a diplomat for the Spanish-Habsburg crown. In 1608, Rubens was appointed court painter in Antwerp by the governor of the Spanisch Netherlands. Political missions, usually combined with artistic commissions, took him to places such as the French and the English courts. Rubens' art mixes the influence of the Italian High Renaissance, which he studied during a long stay in Italy (1600-1608), with Nordic realism and the Flemish interest in depicting landscapes. His work includes altarpieces, historical and mythological scenes, portraits and landscapes. He also designed tapestries, book illustrations and festive decorations, as well as his own house and studio in Antwerp. Rubens' great talent was to transform even complex pictorial subjects into vivid paintings whose figures seemed to be made of flesh and blood. It was only with the help of the numerous assistants in his workshop, that Rubens was able to satisfy the immense demand for his paintings: his assistants often executed paintings from a drawing or sketch by their master. Rubens himself only added the final brushstrokes. His pupils included Jacob Jordaens and Anthonis van Dyck. The influence of Rubens as a model is summarised under the term "Rubenism" for the period from about 1630 to the first third of the 18th century. The influence and reception of Rubens' work, however, extends through Eugène Delacroix and Pablo Picasso to contemporary art.