Flowers and Gardens 



Rubens was a master of amazing power, 

 and it lay easily within his compass to 

 give form of a very high order, along with 

 much dignity and pathos, if not absolute 

 beauty, of feature. But in general the 

 effect of his forms depends rather upon 

 sensuous fulness than upon fineness of 

 proportion and delicately moulded outline. 

 This is most obviously seen in his women. 

 You cannot deny that they often have 

 magnificent figures, as, for instance, the 

 goddesses in the "Judgment of Paris," 

 in the National Gallery, and still more in 

 other cases where there is loose and 

 flowing drapery, but the beauty is com- 

 paratively of a low and sensuous type. 

 There is something very different in the 

 figures of the best antiques, or in the 

 heads of Leonardo da Vinci. And we 

 may go yet higher, so as to speak of ex- 

 pression, and compare these women of 

 Rubens' with Raphael's St. Catherine, or 

 with that Madonna by Perugino in the 

 National Gallery, around whom the still 

 landscape, with its sacred light, seems to 

 gather like a glory. In these pictures 

 there is nothing superficially attractive, 

 except the colouring of the latter ; the 

 figures are somewhat heavy, the hands 

 large and careless, but does not the soul 

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