Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) was the greatest and most influential figure of the northern Baroque. A master of the Antwerp painters' guild from 1598, he completed his education and developed his style during a long stay in Italy, from 1600 to 1608. In particular, he absorbed the influence of antiquity, the High Renaissance and such notable contemporaries as Annibale Carracci and Caravaggio. On his return he was appointed court painter to the Spanish Governors of the Netherlands. Settling in Antwerp, he produced the Raising of the Cross (1610-11) and the Descent from the Cross (1611-14), two huge triptychs, for the city's cathedral. The success of these works contributed to his international reputation as a history painter working in a manner at once grand and vigorous. He met the phenomenal demand for his work by establishing a large and efficient studio, which drew on the talents of such major figures as Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), Frans Snyders (1579-1657) and Van Dyck. His services were sought by the royal families of England, France and Spain, their patronage leading to his involvement in diplomacy as well as painting. Charles I of England made him a knight and commissioned him to decorate the ceiling of the Banqueting House, London, with a series of canvases representing the reign of his father, James I (completed 1635). In 1635 he bought a country house, the Chateau de Steen, between Brussels and Malines, which sparked a late passion for landscape painting, the branch of his art most praised by John Constable as well as by Ruskin. In Modern Painters I, Ruskin singled out Rubens as the only Flemish landscape painter of any great value (see Ruskin on Rubens).