186 



RUBENS, PETER PAUL. 



RUBENS, PETER PAUL. 



186 



and be had executed some considerable pictures. He proceeded first 

 to Venice, and thence to Mantua, where his letters of recommendation 

 from the Archduke Albert secured him the favour of the Duke Vin- 

 cenzio Gonzaga. At his court Rubens accepted the place of gentleman 

 of the chamber, and availed himself of the opportunity thus afforded 

 him of studying the frescoes of Giulio Romano and the other works of 

 art then belonging to the family of Gonzaga. In 1601 he went to 

 Rome for a short time, and after returning to Mantua visited Venice, 

 and devoted himself to the study of the pictures of Titian and Paul 

 Veronese. The works of these two masters probably exercised the 

 strongest influence in the full development of his natural genius for 

 colour. The Archduke Albert commissioned Rubens to paint three 

 pictures for the church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, at Rome, and 

 he returned thither for that purpose, and with the object of copying 

 some celebrated pictures for the Duke of Mantua, and he probably 

 visited Florence in his way back. In 1605 the Duke Vincenzio Gon- 

 zaga sent him on a special mission to Spain with a present for Philip III. 

 That king received him most graciously ; and after painting a large 

 number of portraits of persons connected with the court of Madrid, he 

 returned to Mantua. He paid a third visit to Rome, where he was 

 joined by his elder brother Philip, and in 1607 went through Milan to 

 Genoa. In the latter city he executed many works, and a great 

 number of his pictures still remain there. In 1 608 he received news 

 of his mother's illness, and returned immediately to Antwerp, where 

 however he a.rrived too late to find her alive. 



The wishes of Albert and Isabella induced Rubeus to abandon his 

 project of returning to Italy ; and in 1609 he married his first wife, 

 Elizabeth Brants, and settled at Antwerp. The beautiful picture in 

 the Munich gallery, representing himself and his wife seated in a 

 garden, was probably painted shortly after his marriage. The outline 

 is more precise and the style more true and homely than in most of 

 his works. In the year 1620 Rubens was commissioned to paint the 

 series of pictures now in the Louvre which represent the principal 

 events in the life of Maria de' Medici. He went to Paris, and received 

 his instructions for these works, but the pictures themselves were 

 executed at Antwerp, for the most part by the hands of his numerous 

 pupils. In fact, as they were placed iu the Luxembourg in 1625, it 

 was physically impossible that he should have painted them himself. 

 The original sketches, now iu the Munich gallery, are very far superior 

 to the finished pictures which are now in the Louvre. During his last 

 residence at Paris, Rubens became acquainted with the Duke of 

 Buckingham, who purchased his collection of statues and other works 

 of art for 60,000 florins, or according to De Piles, for 100,000. In 

 1626 Rubens lost his wife, and he shortly afterwards made a journey, 

 in which he visited the principal Dutch painters of that time. 



Rubens had been highly esteemed by the Archduke Albert, and 

 after the death of that prince he continued in the favour of his widow 

 the Infanta. On her return from the siege of Breda, in company with 

 Spinola, in 1625, she visited Rubens's house; and in 1627, when 

 Charles I. declared war against France, Rubens was entrusted with 

 some negociations with Gerbier, Charles's agent at the Hague. In the 

 autumn of the same year he was despatched to Madrid. During his 

 stay in Spain he executed several very fine pictures, and gained the 

 favour of Philip IV. and the Count-Duke of Olivarez. In 1629 

 Rubens was sent by the Infanta as ambassador to England. The 

 painter succeeded as a diplomatist, and his merits in procuring 

 Charles's acquiescence in the peace were recognised by the court of 

 Spain. Whilst in England, he stood high in the favour of Charles I., 

 whose feeling for the fine arts seems to have been of the strongest 

 kind. The allegory of War and Peace, now in the National Gallery, 

 was painted as a suitable present to the king, on the occasion of these 

 negociations. After the breaking up of Charles's matchless collection, 

 this picture was transferred to Genoa, but was purchased during the 

 French revolution from the Doria family, and thus restored to this 

 country. The ceiling of Whitehall was sketched during Rubens's 

 stay in England, but painted at Antwerp at a later period. For the 

 latter work he is said to have received 3000. In 1631 Rubens married 

 his second wife, Helena Forman, a beautiful girl of sixteen. Her 

 portrait often recurs in his pictures. He was again employed on a 

 mission to Holland in 1633; and in December of that year, his 

 patroness, the Infanta Isabella, died. 



Rubens's fame now stood very high, and the commissions he received 

 could only be executed by the aid of his numerous and able pupils. 

 In 1635 he became subject to gout in the hands, which disabled him 

 from painting with ease on a large scale. At the request of the 

 authorities of Antwerp, he executed sketches for the decoration of the 

 arches to be erected on the entry of the Cardinal Infant, Don Fer- 

 dinand, the new regent of the Low Countries. He died in possession 

 of great wealth, on the 30th of May 1640, in the 63rd year of his age, 

 and was buried in the church of St. Jaques at Antwerp. 



Rubens's personal appearance was prepossessing, and his manner 

 and conduct such as to make him generally beloved. Towards other 

 artists he acted with great generosity, and he is said to have relieved 

 the poverty of Vandyck by purchasing all the pictures which that 

 artist had in his studio. 



His own character and merits as a painter have been the subject of 

 much controversy, and will probably always furnish matter for dis- 

 cussion. In all questions of literature and art, we are never satisfied 



without constantly comparing things which are in themselves utterly 

 dissimilar. The source of pleasure from works of art is obscure, and 

 the nature of the pleasure itself is little capable of definition, but 

 men think to obtain greater precision, and to arrive at the reason why 

 they are pleased, by this process of comparison. To a certain extent 

 perhaps we may succeed, but in general such comparisons have a ten- 

 dency to narrow our field of enjoyment, and to lead us to dogmatise 

 on what cannot be reduced to fixed rulea. A man may derive greater 

 satisfaction from the works of Perugino or Francesco Francia than 

 from those of Rubens or Teniers ; he may feel the beauty of the 

 Parthenon more than that of Strasbourg cathedral : but he is not there- 

 fore justified in saying that Rubens was a bad painter, or that Erwin 

 of Steinbach was an indifferent architect. 



The principal sources of pleasure in painting appear to be form, 

 composition, colour, and, the highest of all, the expression of human 

 character and action. The subdivisions of this last branch are of 

 course infinite, and comprise the higher and holier feelings, as well as 

 those which are more properly a portion of our animal nature. "In 

 those parts of his art which act immediately on the senses, Rubens 

 was without doubt a great master. He understood the perfect 

 management of light and shade, of composition, and colour. If his 

 merits are disputed, it is with reference to the subjects which he 

 painted arid to his mode of treating them, not to his technical skill. 

 Before his visit to Italy he had acquired an individual character as an 

 artist. The fruit of his labours there was not a crude mass of detached 

 imitations, but, whilst he carefully studied the great masters at Venice 

 and elsewhere, his vigorous genius assimilated and appropriated to 

 itself all that it took up or borrowed. The excess of individual pecu- 

 liarity in Rubens certainly amounts to ' manner ' in the narrower sense 

 of the word. That peculiarity of feeling too did not dwell on the 

 forms which are best fitted for expressing the tranquil and devotional 

 sentiments which prevail in early Christian art, but still, such as it 

 was, it was eminently characteristic of a ' great painter.' Sculpture 

 exceeds painting in its power of expressing form, and equals it in 

 that of portraying fixed character; but painting only can express the 

 tumult and energy of human action in full power and motion. In this 

 Rubens excelled, and it is surely no mean excellence. We are ready to 

 grant that his Madonnas are, for the most part, clumsy and undignified ; 

 that their forms are unfitted for the being whom they represent; and 

 that exaggeration sometimes disfigures scenes where quiet and holy 

 feelings would be more in place. Notwithstanding all this, the 

 stronger human passions and actions have an intense interest for man- 

 kind. The animal energy and the sensual characteristics of man are a 

 part of that complex whole which we call human nature, although 

 they are not the most elevated part. If art is to represent man as he 

 is, these elements cannot be wholly overlooked. The Greek drama 

 displayed them too glaringly in the olden comedy, and Greek sculpture 

 embodied them in its fawns and satyrs. An acute sense of beauty 

 indeed generally softened the more disgusting features, and we might 

 wish that Rubens had been oftener touched with similar scruples. 

 We must take him however as he is ; with all his technical excellence, 

 and with all the incomparable energy and heartiness which animates 

 his best works. In them there is none of that idle filling up of vacant 

 corners, or that insertion of cold academic figures wholly unconcerned 

 with the scenes portrayed, which we find in works of the same kind 

 by other masters. If we look at Rubens's Village Fete, in the Louvre, 

 the ring of peasants wheel round in the dance with a drunken merri- 

 ment which seems in actual motion before us. The smaller picture of 

 the Last Judgment, at Munich, is just as wonderful for this quality 

 of movement, as for its glorious colour and execution. His Battle of 

 the Amazons, in the same collection, conveys, in a most wonderful 

 degree, the struggle and energy of a combat. Action and life he never 

 failed to represent as no other painter has done before or since, and 

 this alone, in our opinion, entitles him to a place in the very foremost 

 rank of artists. 



In landscape, Rubens's facility of execution and gorgeous colour 

 produce a marvellous effect. His hunting-pieces and portraits are 

 equally celebrated. The picture commonly referred to as the chef- 

 d'oeuvre of Rubens is the Descent from the Cross, at Antwerp. The 

 best of his works are in the Munich gallery (which contains no less 

 than ninety-five of his works, principally derived from the Diisseldorf 

 collection) and at Blenheim and Vienna, but there are ten pictures by 

 him, several of them excellent specimens of his different styles, in the 

 National Gallery. Many fine pictures by him remain in Spain, and 

 many of course at Antwerp. 



His principal pupils were Vandyck, Jordaens, Snyders, Van Thul- 

 den, Krayer, Diepenbeck, and Quellin, but most of them imitated 

 the outward characteristics of their master without catching his fire 

 and energy. The engravers of his school, such as Pontius and Bols- 

 wert, succeeded admirably in conveying the general character of those 

 pictures which it would seem most difficult to translate into mere 

 black and white. 



We may conclude by saying that Rubens did that for his country 

 which has rarely if ever been accomplished for any other land. At 

 the time of John and Hubert van Eyck, the school of Flanders had 

 attained the highest pitch of excellence. Those artists united a 

 diligent and minute observation of nature to the finest technical skill 

 and the most successful delineation of character and feeling. At a 



