_Rubens_ (Flemish: 1577-1640). _See 38._
For the subject see under 93. "Rubens painted these subjects with
a gusto in which there is something fearful, so wonderful is the
skill, the felicity of execution, the life, the energy, the fancy
displayed--so gross and so repulsive the sentiment. In Niccolo
Poussin's Bacchanalian scenes we have the licence and the revels of
gods and nymphs, and of the golden age. Rubens gives us, with perhaps a
truer moral feeling but more depraved taste, mere animal sensuality,
with all its most brutal attributes" (Mrs. Jameson's _Handbook to the
Private Galleries of London_, p. 362). This picture was in the artist's
possession at the time of his death, and was then bought for Cardinal
Richelieu. It was afterwards in the collection of Sir Robert Peel, who
gave £1100 for it.