New Rubens exhibition: painter, superstar, and multimedia factory manager

The word "studio" does scant justice to the space in which Peter Paul Rubens worked. Galleried, grandiose, even palatial, it feels as much like a theatre – or a throne room – as a painter's workshop. The Flemish master added it to his house in Antwerp in the 1610s, during the building works in which Europe's most sought-after artist transformed a modest merchant's residence in the port on the Scheldt into a showcase that borrowed the style of an Italian "palazzetto".