BOOK VII.

REVIVAL OF PAINTING. EXPEDIENCY AND COMMON SENSE.

CHAPTER XXX.

NEW VITALITY IN THE NETHERLANDS; THE SUBJECTIVE STYLES OF RUBENS AND REMBRANDT, SUCCEEDED BY THE HIGHEST OBJECTIVE

DEVELOPMENT OF THE ART.

THE Italianization of Flemish art has been already noticed in the twenty-third chapter. The first masters who materially contributed to this influence in the Low Countries, were Jan Schoorcl, Bernard van Orley, Michael Coxcien, Lambert Lombard, Frans Floris, Martin de Vos, and Peter Pourbus.1 The first great master, however, of this new development of Flemish painting was PETER PAUL RUBENS," "a meteor of art,” as Fuseli has well said, though, after the productions of Paolo Veronese, he can hardly be considered the inventor of a new style. His great distinction is his extraordinary mastery of his materials.

Rubens was born at Siegen, in Westphalia, in 1577, on the day of Saints Peter and Paul, June 29th. His parents, John Rubens, a lawyer, and Mary Pypeling, natives of Antwerp, emigrated in 1568, lived some time at Siegen, settled in Cologne in 1578, and remained there until he was ten years old, when his father died, and in 1587 he was removed by his mother to Antwerp. His principal master was Otho van Veen, a distinguished painter of Antwerp, with whom he studied four years he had worked previously a short time with Adam van Noort, and some others of less note. In 1598 he was enrolled a Master in the Corporation of Painters of Antwerp, and in the spring of 1600 he went to Italy, and studied the works of the great Italian colourists at Venice. 1 See Ch. XXIII.

2 After his residence in Italy Rubens commonly subscribed himself PIETRO PAULO RUBENS.

He visited and painted in many other cities of Italy, more especially Mantua, where he entered the service of the Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga, who sent Rubens in 1605 on a mission to Madrid, to Philip III. of Spain. In 1608 he returned to Antwerp, his journey home being hastened by the illness of his mother, who, however, died before his arrival; there is a reputed portrait of her in the Dulwich Gallery, but it does not look like the work of a young painter of two-and-twenty, which it must be if the portrait of his mother, and by Rubens himself. He afterwards visited Paris, and in 1628 Madrid, where he had Velazquez for a cicerone. In 1629 he was in London. He served as Dean of the Antwerp Guild of Painters in 1631; and finally died at Antwerp, honoured and wealthy, May 30th, 1640, and was buried in the church of St. Jacques, where there is an epitaph to his memory by his friend Gevartius. He was twice married-first in October, 1609, to ISABELLA BRANT; she died in 1626, leaving two sons, and their magnificent father appointed Gevartius their tutor; his second wife was HELENA FOURMENT, a girl of sixteen, his first wife's sister's daughter, to whom he was married in 1630. She survived him and married again; she had five children by Rubens. Both his wives were handsome and served him as models; the dates of his pictures will decide which, in the several cases. Rubens was knighted both by Charles I. of England, and by Philip IV. of Spain. He lived in great splendour at Antwerp, where in 1610 he built himself a house which cost him 60,000 florins; and he accumulated during his life such a valuable collection of works of art, that a portion of it only realized after his death, by private sale, the enormous sum of upwards of 20,000l. sterling.'

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Rubens, speaking characteristically or æsthetically, represents magnificence arising from colour. 'Rubens," says Fuseli, "born in Germany, but brought up at Antwerp, then the depository of western commerce, a school of religious and classic learning, and the pompous seat of Austrian and Spanish superstition, met these advantages with an ardour and success of which ordinary

See the list printed by Dawson Turner-" Catalogue of the Works of Art in the possession of Sir P. P. Rubens," &c., 8vo., Yarmouth, 2nd ed., 1839. Some very interesting facts relating to Rubens are published in "Original unpublished Papers illustrative of the life of Rubens," &c., by W. N. Sainsbury, London, Svo., 1859.

2 Lecture II. On the birth-place of Rubens and the circumstances which led to his being born not at Cologne, but at Siegen, see Alfred Michiels, "Rubens et l'Ecole d'Anvers," 8vo., Paris, 1854. The primary cause was an intrigue his father had with Anne of Saxony, wife of William the Taciturn, for which he was undergoing imprisonment. This wretched princess died insane, partly from her own bad temper, and partly from the cruel treatment she was subjected to, in her prison in the Electoral Palace of Saxony, on the 18th December, 1577. See also Motley's "Rise of the Dutch Republic,". iv. ch. iii.

minds can form no idea, if we compare the period at which he is said to have seriously applied himself to painting under the tuition of Otto van Veen, with the unbounded power he had acquired over the instruments of art when he set out for Italy, where we instantly discover him not as the pupil, but as the successful rival of the masters whose works he had selected for the objects of his emulation. Endowed with a full comprehension of his own character, he wasted not a moment on the acquisition of excellence incompatible with its fervour, but flew to the centre of his ambition, Venice, and soon compounded from the splendour of Paolo Veronese and the glow of Tintoretto that florid system of mannered magnificence which is the element of his art and principle of his school. He first spread that ideal palette, which reduced to its standard the variety of nature, and once methodized, whilst his mind tuned the method, shortened or superseded individual imitation. His scholars, however dissimilar in themselves, saw with the eye of their master; the eye of Rubens was become the substitute of nature: still the mind alone that had balanced these tints, and weighed their powers, could apply them to their objects, and determine their use in the pompous display of historic and allegoric magnificence; for that they were selected; for that the gorgeous nosegay swelled: but when, in the progress of depraved practice, they became the mere palliatives of mental impotence, empty representatives of themselves, the supporters of nothing but clumsy forms and clumsier conceits, they can only be considered as splendid improprieties, as the substitutes for wants which no colour can palliate and no tint supply."

In another place' Fuseli observes: "What has been said of Michelangelo in FORM, may be said of Rubens in COLOUR: they had but one. As the one came to Nature and moulded her to his generic form, the other came to Nature and tinged her with his colour-the colour of gay magnificence. He levelled his subject to his style, but seldom, if ever, his style to his subject: whatever be the subject of Rubens, legend, allegoric, stern, mournful, martyrdom, fable, epic, dramatic, lyric, grave or gay-the hues that embody, the air that tinges them, is an indiscriminate expanse of gay magnificence. If the economy of his colours be that of an immense nosegay, he has not always connected the ingredients with a prismatic eye: the balance of the iris is not arbitrary: the balance of his colour often is."

Of the principal masters of Rubens, one was a Fleming, the other a Dutchman. ADAM VAN NOORT, the son and pupil of Lambert van Noort, who died in 1571 (sometimes incorrectly written Van Oort), was a painter of great ability and a good colourist he was born at

1 Lecture XI.

Antwerp in 1557, was received as master of the Company of St. Luke in 1587 and after a long and turbulent life, through his own bad habits and ungovernable temper, died in his native place in 1641, aged eighty-four. Rubens had a high opinion of Van Noort's ability, and is reported to have said that he would have surpassed his contemporaries had he visited Rome and formed his style upon good models.

OTHо or OCTAVIUS VAN VEEN, called also OTTO VENIUS, was born of a noble family at Leyden, in 1558. When still a boy he was taken by his father to Liége, and was sent from there, by the Cardinal de Groesbeke, in 1575, to Rome, where he became the pupil of Federigo Zucchero, and he remained there five years. He was settled in Antwerp in 1593, and was there admitted a master or franc-maître in the Guild of Painters in 1594; he served as Dean of the Corporation in 1603-4, but being made superintendent of the mint by Albert and Isabella, then governors of the Spanish Netherlands, he removed to Brussels in 1620, where he died May 6th, 1629.1 The Antwerp Gallery possesses several examples of Van Veen, among which "The calling of St. Matthew," his masterpiece, is a noble work; it has fine qualities of composition, form, and colour. Otho van Veen was also a poet and writer: of his eight children, two sons and six daughters, by his wife Anne Loots, one only, a daughter, Gertrude, cultivated the art of her father: his portrait by her is in the Gallery at Brussels.

The works of Rubens are surprisingly numerous; but the majority of the great works attributed to him were painted by his scholars from small coloured sketches by his own hand. He is seen to advantage in the National Gallery at London, in the Belvedere Gallery at Vienna, in the Louvre at Paris, and in the Gallery of Brussels: it is, however, only at Munich or Antwerp that his immense powers can be adequately appreciated. The collection of Munich alone contains ninety-four pictures by Rubens; Antwerp, however, is still in possession of his greatest works-the Descent from the Cross, in the cathedral, the Crucifixion and the Adoration of the Kings, in the gallery of the museum, besides many others, perhaps equally excellent, in its several churches. The Fallen Angels, in the Gallery of Munich, has been already noticed at some length.

The Descent from the Cross, however, in the cathedral at Antwerp, is generally allowed to be the capo d'opera of Rubens. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who has made many excellent observations on the works of Rubens, in his "Journey to Flanders and Holland," remarks at some length on this celebrated picture. He says: "This picture, of all the works of Rubens, is that which has the most reputation.

1 "Catalogue du Musée d'Anvers," 1857.

I had consequently conceived the highest idea of its excellence; knowing the print, I had formed in my imagination what such a composition would produce in the hands of such a painter. I confess I was disappointed. However, this disappointment did not proceed from any deficiency in the picture itself; had it been in the original state in which Rubens left it, it must have appeared very different but it is mortifying to see to what degree it has suffered by cleaning and mending: that brilliant effect, which it undoubtedly once had, is lost in a mist of varnish, which appears to be chilled or mildewed.' The Christ is in many places retouched, so as to be visible at a distance: the St. John's head is repainted; and other parts, on a close inspection, appear to be chipping off, and ready to fall from the canvas. However, there is enough to be seen to satisfy any connoisseur that in its perfect state it well deserved all its reputation.

"The composition of this picture is said to be borrowed from an Italian print; this print I never saw; but those who have seen it say that Rubens has made no deviation from it, except in the attitude of the Magdalen. On the print is written Peter Passer, Invenit; Hieronymus Wirix, Sculpsit.

"The greatest peculiarity of this composition is the contrivance of the white sheet on which the body of Jesus lies; this circumstance is probably what induced Rubens to adopt the composition. He well knew what effect white linen, opposed to flesh, must have with his powers of colouring,—a circumstance which was not likely to enter into the mind of an Italian painter, who probably would have been afraid of the linen's hurting the colouring of the flesh, and have kept it down of a low tint. And the truth is, that none but great colourists can venture to paint pure white linen near flesh; but such know the advantage of it: so that possibly what was stolen by Rubens, the possessor knew not how to value, and certainly no person knew so well as Rubens how to use. After all, this may perhaps turn out another Lauder's detection of plagiarism." I could wish to see this print, if there is one, to ascertain how far Rubens was indebted 1 It has lately been restored, and has recovered much of its original general effect.

2 This has reference to a work by one William Lauder, a Scotchman, who in 1751 published a malignant book entitled "An Essay on Milton's Use and Imitation of the moderns in his Paradise Lost," containing quotations forged by himself and other impostors. Upon the detection of his infamous slanders, which he was forced to confess, he vented his hatred in another essay, published in 1754, entitled, "The Grand Impostor Detected, or Milton convicted of Forgery against King Charles I.," which was proved to be equally malicious and false with the former essay. If such a print exists as that alluded to by Sir Joshua, it may possibly have been the fabrication of some Flemish man of art suffering equally from the torments of envy, as the Scotch man of letters; an envy which, in Lauder's case, appears to have amounted to insanity.