during the desperate struggle of the Netherlands to shake off the
dominion of Spain, retired from his own city to Cologne, to escape from
the miseries of war. There, in the year 1577, Peter Paul Rubens was
born. At an early age he gave indications of superior abilities, and his
education was conducted with suitable care. The elder Rubens returned to
Antwerp with his family, when that city passed again into the hands of
Spain. It was the custom of that age to domesticate the sons of
honourable families in the houses of the nobility, where they were
instructed in all the accomplishments becoming a gentleman: and in
conformity with it, young Rubens entered as a page into the service of
the Countess of Lalain. The restraint and formality of this life ill
suited his warm imagination and active mind: and on his father’s death,
he obtained permission from his mother to commence his studies as a
painter under Tobias Verhaecht, by whom he was taught the principles of
landscape painting, and of architecture. But Rubens wished to become an
historical painter, and he entered the school of Adam Van Oort, who was
then eminent in that branch of art. This man possessed great talents,
but they were degraded by a brutal temper and profligate habits, and
Rubens soon left him in disgust. His next master was Otho Van Veen, or
Venius, an artist in almost every respect the opposite of Van Oort,
distinguished by scholastic acquirements as well as professional skill,
of refined manners, and amiable disposition. Rubens was always
accustomed to speak of him with great respect and affection, nor was it
extraordinary that he should have conceived a cordial esteem for a man
whose character bore so strong a resemblance to his own. From Venius,
Rubens imbibed his fondness for allegory; which, though in many respects
objectionable, certainly contributes to the magnificence of his style.
In 1600, after having studied four years under this master, he visited
Italy, bearing letters of recommendation from Albert, governor of the
Netherlands, by whom he had already been employed, to Vincenzio Gonzaga,
duke of Mantua. He was received by that prince with marked distinction,
and appointed one of the gentlemen of his chamber. He remained at Mantua
two years, during which time he executed several original pictures, and
devoted himself attentively to the study of the works of Giulio Romano.
In passing through Venice, Rubens had been deeply impressed with the
great works of art which he saw there. He had determined to revisit that
city on the first opportunity, and at length obtained permission from
his patron to do so. In the Venetian school his genius found its proper
aliment; but it is perhaps to Paul Veronese that he is principally
indebted. He looked at Titian, no doubt, with unqualified admiration;
but Titian has on all occasions, a dignity and sedateness not congenial
to the gay temperament of Rubens. In Paul Veronese he found all the
elements of his subsequent style; gaiety, magnificence, fancy disdainful
of restraint, brilliant colouring, and that masterly execution by which
an almost endless variety of objects are blended into one harmonious
whole. Three pictures painted for the church of the Jesuits immediately
after his return to Mantua, attested how effectually he had prosecuted
his studies at Venice. He then developed those powers which afterwards
established his reputation, and secured to him a distinction which he
still holds without a competitor, that of being the best imitator, and
most formidable rival of the Venetian school.
Rome, with its exhaustless treasures of art, was still before him, and
he was soon gratified with an opportunity of visiting that capital. The
Duke of Mantua wished to obtain copies of some of the finest pictures
there, and he engaged Rubens to make them, with the double motive of
availing himself of his talents and facilitating his studies. This task
was doubtless rendered light to Rubens, as well by gratitude towards his
patron as by his own great facility of execution. In this respect Sir J.
Reynolds considers him superior to all other painters; and says that he
was “perhaps the greatest master in the mechanical part of his art, the
best workman with his tools, that ever handled a pencil.” He executed
for the Duke copies of several great works, which could scarcely be
distinguished from the originals. Among his own compositions, painted
while at Rome, the most conspicuous are three in the church of S. Croce
in Gerusalemme, two of which, Christ bearing the Cross, and the
Crucifixion, are considered to rank among his finest productions. There
is also, in the Campidoglio, a picture painted by him at this time, of
the finding of Romulus and Remus, a work of remarkable spirit and
beauty.
Rubens, however, had formed his style at Venice, and was not induced by
the contemplation of the great works at Rome to alter it in any
essential particular. It is not thence to be inferred that he was
insensible to the wonders which surrounded him at Rome; that he did not
appreciate the epic sublimity of Michael Angelo, the pure intelligence
of Raphael; his admiration of ancient sculpture is attested by his
written precepts. Of the antique, certainly, no trace of imitation is to
be found in his works; but perhaps the bold style of design, which he
had adopted in opposition to the meagre taste of his German
predecessors, was confirmed by the swelling outlines of Michael Angelo.
If he imitated Raphael in any thing, it was in composition; and if in
that great quality of art he has any superior, it is in Raphael alone.
The opinion which the Duke of Mantua had formed of Rubens’s general
powers was now evinced in an extraordinary manner. Having occasion, in
1605, to send an envoy to Spain, he selected Rubens for the purpose, and
directed him to return immediately from Rome to Mantua, in order to set
out on his embassy. The young artist succeeded equally well as a
diplomatist, and as a painter. He executed a portrait of the King, who
honoured him with flattering marks of distinction, and he fully
accomplished the object of his mission. Shortly after his return to
Mantua he revisited Rome, where he contributed three pictures to the
church of S. Maria in Vallicella. In these the imitation of Paul
Veronese is particularly conspicuous. He next went to Genoa, where he
executed several important works, and was regarded in that city with an
interest and respect commensurate to his high reputation. In the midst
of this splendid career, Rubens received intelligence that his mother,
from whom he had been absent eight years, lay dangerously ill. He
hastened to Antwerp, but she had expired before his arrival. The death
of this affectionate parent afflicted him so severely, that he
determined to quit a city fraught with painful associations, and to take
up his future residence in Italy. But the Duke Albert, and the Infanta
Isabella, being anxious to retain him in their own territory, he was
induced to relinquish his intention, and finally settled at Antwerp.
There he continued to practise during several years, and enriched
Europe, the Low Countries especially, with a surprising number of
pictures almost uniform in excellence. His style, indeed, with all its
admirable qualities, was one in which the delicacies of form and
expression were never allowed to stand in the way of despatch. His mode
of working was to make small sketches, slightly but distinctly; these
were delivered to his scholars, who executed pictures from them on a
larger scale, which they carried forward almost to the final stage, at
which Rubens took them up himself. Thus his own labour was given only to
invention and finishing, the only parts of the art in which the
painter’s genius is essentially exercised. Wherever his works were
dispersed, the demand for them increased, and fortune poured in on him
in a golden flood. Rubens’s mode of living at Antwerp was the _beau
idéal_ of a painter’s existence. His house was embellished with such a
collection of works of art, pictures, statues, busts, vases, and other
objects of curiosity and elegance, as gave it the air of a princely
museum. In the midst of these he pursued his labours, and it was his
constant practice while painting to have read to him works of ancient or
modern literature in various languages. It is a strong testimony to the
variety of his powers, and the cultivation of his mind, that he was well
skilled in seven different tongues. His splendid establishment
comprehended a collection of wild beasts, which he kept as living models
for those hunting pieces, and other representations of savage animals,
which have never been surpassed. Such talents and such success could not
fail of exciting envy; a cabal headed by Schut, Jansens, and Rombouts,
endeavoured to detract from his reputation, and it is amusing to find
him accused, among other deficiencies, of wanting invention! His great
picture of the Descent from the Cross, painted for the Cathedral of
Antwerp, and exhibited while the outcry against him was at its height,
effectually allayed it. Snyders and Wildens were answered in a similar
manner. They had insinuated that the chief credit of Rubens’s landscapes
and animals was due to their assistance. Rubens painted several lion and
tiger hunts, and other similar works, entirely with his own hand, which
he did not permit to be seen until they were completed. In these works
he even surpassed his former productions; they were executed with a
truth power, and energy, which excited universal astonishment, and
effectually put his adversaries to silence. Rubens condescended to give
no other reply to his calumniators; and he showed his own goodness of
heart, by finding employment for those among them whom he understood to
be in want of it.
In 1628 he was commissioned by Mary de Medici, Queen of France, to adorn
the gallery of the Luxembourg with a set of pictures, twenty-four in
number, illustrative of the events of her life. Within three years he
completed this magnificent series, in which allegory mingles with
history, and the immense variety of actors, human and superhuman, with
appropriate accompaniments, lays open a boundless field to the
imagination of the artist. The largest of these pictures, which is the
Coronation of Mary de Medici, combines with the gorgeous colouring
proper to the subject, a correctness and chastity of design seldom
attained by Rubens, and is consequently an example of that high
excellence which might be expected from his style when divested of its
imperfections. The gallery of the Luxembourg, as long as it possessed
those ornaments, was considered one of the wonders of Europe. The
pictures are now removed to the Louvre, and are seen perhaps with
diminished effect, among the mass of miscellaneous works with which they
are surrounded.
The two last of the Luxembourg series Rubens finished in Paris. On his
return to the Netherlands his political talents were again called into
requisition, and he was despatched by the Infanta Isabella to Madrid, to
receive instructions preparatory to a negotiation for peace between
Spain and England. Philip IV., and the Duke de Olivarez, his minister,
received him with every demonstration of regard, nor did they neglect to
avail themselves of his professional skill. The King engaged him to
paint four pictures of large dimensions for the Convent of Carmelites,
near Madrid, recently founded by Olivarez, to whom Philip presented
those magnificent works. The subjects were the Triumph of the New Law,
Abraham and Melchizedec, the four Evangelists, and the four Doctors of
the Church, with their distinctive emblems. He also painted a series of
pictures for the great Saloon of the Palace at Madrid, which represent
the Rape of the Sabines, the Battle between the Romans and Sabines, the
Bath of Diana, Perseus and Andromeda, the Rape of Helen, the Judgment of
Paris, and the Triumph of Bacchus. The Judgment of Paris is now in the
possession of Mr. Penrice, of Great Yarmouth, and may be considered one
of the finest of Rubens’s smaller pictures; the figures being half the
size of life. The King rewarded him munificently, and conferred on him
the honour of knighthood.
Rubens returned to Flanders in 1627, and had no sooner rendered an
account of his mission to the Infanta, than he was sent by that princess
to England in order to sound the Government on the subject of a peace
with Spain, the chief obstacle to which had been removed by the death of
the Duke of Buckingham. It is probable that Rubens’s extraordinary
powers as an artist formed one motive for employing him in those
diplomatic functions. The monarchs to whose courts he was sent were
passionate admirers of art; and the frequent visits which they made to
Rubens in his painting room, and the confidence with which they honoured
him, gave him opportunities, perhaps, in his double capacity, of
obviating political difficulties, which might not otherwise have been so
easily overcome. This was certainly the case in his negotiations with
Charles I. He was not, it appears, formally presented in the character
of an envoy. But the monarch received him with all the consideration due
to his distinguished character; and it was while he was engaged on the
paintings at Whitehall, the progress of which the King delighted to
inspect, that he disclosed the object of his visit, and produced his
credentials. This he did with infinite delicacy and address; and the
King was by no means indisposed to listen to his proposals. A council
was appointed to negotiate with him on the subject of a pacification,
which was soon after concluded. It was on this occasion that Rubens
painted and presented to the King the picture of Peace and War, which is
now in our National Gallery. The relation of that work to the object of
his mission is obvious: the blessings of peace in contradistinction to
the miseries of war are beautifully illustrated; and whether Rubens paid
this compliment to the King while his negotiations were in progress, or
after they were terminated, a more elegant and appropriate gift was
never addressed by a minister to a monarch. The painter was splendidly
remunerated, and honoured with knighthood by Charles in 1630. The object
of his mission being happily accomplished, he returned to the
Netherlands, where he was received with the distinction due to his
splendid genius and successful services.
His various and incessant labours appear to have prematurely broken his
constitution; he had scarcely attained his fifty-eighth year when he was
attacked by gout with more than usual severity. This painful disease was
succeeded by a general debility, which obliged him to desist from the
execution of large works, to relinquish all public business, and even to
limit his correspondence to his particular friends, and a few
distinguished artists. His letters, however, when he touches on the
subject of art, rise into a strain of animated enthusiasm. He continued
to work, but chiefly on small subjects, till the year 1640, when he died
at the age of sixty-three. He was interred with great splendour in the
church of St. James, under the altar of his private chapel, which he had
ornamented with one of his finest pictures. A monument was erected to
his memory by his widow and children, with an epitaph descriptive of his
distinguished talents, the functions he had filled, and the honours with
which he had been rewarded.
In extent of range the pencil of Rubens is unrivalled. History,
portrait, landscape under the aspect of every season, animal life in
every form, are equally familiar to him. His hunting pieces especially,
wherein lions, tigers, and other wild animals, with men, dogs, and
horses, are depicted under all the circumstances of fierce excitement,
momentary action, and complicated foreshortenings, are wonderful. Rubens
wanted only a purer style in designing the human figure, to have been a
perfect, as well as a universal painter. His taste in this particular is
singularly unlike that which the habits of his life seemed likely to
produce. He had been bred up in scenes of courtly elegance, and he was
acquainted with whatever was beautiful in art; yet his conception of
character, especially in relation to feminine beauty, betrays a singular
want of refinement. His goddesses, nymphs, and heroines are usually fat,
middle-aged ladies, sometimes even old and ugly; and they always retain
the peculiarities of individual models. His men too, though not without
an air of portly grandeur, want mental dignity. Faults of such magnitude
would have ruined the fame of almost any other painter; but while the
pictures of Rubens are before us, it is hard to criticise severely their
defects. If, as a colourist, he is inferior to Titian, it is, perhaps,
rather in kind than in degree: Titian’s colouring may be compared to the
splendour of the summer sun; that of Rubens excites the exhilarating
sensations of a spring morning. It is true that the artifice of his
system is sometimes too apparent, whereas, in Titian, it is wholly
concealed; Rubens, however, painted for a darker atmosphere, and adapted
the effect of his pictures to the light in which they were likely to be
seen. Inferior to Raphael in elegance and purity of composition, he
competes with him in fertility and clearness of arrangement. He drew
from Paul Veronese a general idea of diffused and splendid effect, but
he superadded powers of pathos and expression, to which that artist was
a stranger. It is, as Reynolds justly observes, only in his large works
that the genius of Rubens is fully developed; in these he appears as the
Homer of his art, dazzling and astonishing with poetic conception, with
grandeur, and energy, and executive power.
Of Rubens’s personal character we may speak in terms of high praise. He
bore his great reputation without pride or presumption; he was amiable
in his domestic relations, courteous and affable to all. He was the
liberal encourager of merit, especially in his own art, and he repaid
those among his contemporaries who aspersed him, by endeavouring to
serve them. His own mind was uncontaminated by envy, for which perhaps
little credit will be given him, conscious, as he must have been, of his
own most extraordinary endowments. His noble admission, however, of
Titian’s superiority, when he copied one of his works at Madrid, attests
the magnanimity of his disposition; and his almost parental kindness to
his pupil, Vandyke, shows that he was equally willing to recognize the
claims, and to promote the success of living genius.
Rubens’s greatest works are at Antwerp, Cologne, Paris, Munich, and
Madrid. The paintings at Whitehall might have formed a noble monument of
his powers, but they have suffered both from neglect and reparation.
There are smaller works of his in the National Gallery, the Dulwich
Gallery, and in almost every private collection in this country.
The best memoir of Rubens with which we are acquainted is in La Vie des
Peintres Flamands, par Descamps. Notices may also be found in the Abrégé
de la Vie des Peintres, par De Piles. There is an English life in
Bryan’s Dictionary of Painters.
[Illustration: Entrance to Rubens’ Garden, from a design by himself.]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by T. Woolnoth._
RICHELIEU.
_From a Picture,
in his Majesty’s Collection._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London, Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
[Illustration]
RICHELIEU.
The name of Du Plessis was borne by an ancient family of Poitou, which
subsequently acquired by marriage the property and title of Richelieu.
Francois Du Plessis was attached to King Henry III. while he was yet
Duke of Anjou; accompanied him when he became King of Poland; and was
made Grand Provost of his Court, after his accession to the throne of
France. In this capacity he arrested the followers of Guise, when that
duke was assassinated at Blois, in 1588.
Armand Jean Du Plessis, the future cardinal, was the third son of this
dignitary, and was born on the 5th of September, 1585, at Paris, say his
biographers, Aubery and Leclerc; whilst tradition claims this honour for
the family château in Poitou. He received the elements of education at
home, from the Prior of St. Florent; but soon quitted the paternal
mansion, first for the College of Navarre, subsequently for that of
Lisieux. From thence he removed to a military academy, being intended
for the profession of arms. But on his brother, who was Bishop of Luçon,
resolving to quit the world for the cloister, young Armand was advised
to abandon the sword for the gown, in order that he might succeed to his
brother’s bishopric.
He adopted the advice, entered with zeal into the study of theology, and
soon qualified himself to pass creditably through the exercises
necessary to obtain the degree of Doctor in Theology. He already wore
the insignia of his bishopric. But the Pope’s sanction was still
wanting, and was withheld on account of the extreme youth of the
expectant. Resolved to overcome this difficulty, he set off to Rome,
addressed the Pontiff in a Latin oration, and gave such proofs of talent
and acquirements above his age, that he was consecrated at Rome on the
Easter of 1607, being as yet but twenty-two years of age.
This position attained, Richelieu endeavoured to make the utmost
advantage of it. He acquired the good-will of his diocese by rigid
attention to the affairs that fell under his jurisdiction; whilst in
frequent visits to the capital, he sought to acquire reputation by
preaching. In the Estates General of 1614, he was chosen deputy by his
diocese, and was afterwards selected by the clergy of the states to
present their _cahier_ or vote of grievances to the monarch. It was an
opportunity not to be thrown away by the ambition of Richelieu, who
instantly put himself forward as the champion of the Queen Mother
against the cabal of the high noblesse. He at the same time adroitly
pointed out where she might find auxiliaries, by complaining that
ecclesiastics had no longer a place in the public administration, and
were thus degraded from their ancient and legitimate share of influence.
Richelieu was rewarded with the place of Almoner to the Queen; and he
was soon admitted to her confidence, as well as to that of her favourite
the Maréchal D’Ancre.
In 1616 he was appointed Secretary of State; but aware by what slender
tenure the office was held, he refused to give up his bishopric. This
excited not only the animadversions of the public, but the anger of the
favourite. Richelieu offered to give up his secretaryship, but the Queen
could not dispense with his talents. The assassination of the favourite,
however, soon overthrew the influence of the Queen herself. Still
Richelieu remained attached to her, and followed her to Blois: but the
triumphant party dreading his talents for intrigue, ordered him to quit
the Queen, and repair to one of his priories in Anjou. He was
subsequently commanded to retire to his bishopric, and at last exiled to
Avignon. Here he sought to avert suspicion by affecting to devote
himself once more to theological pursuits. During this period he
published one or two polemical tracts, the mediocrity of which proves
either that his genius lay not in this path, or, as is probable, that
his interest and thoughts were elsewhere.
The escape of the Queen Mother from her place of confinement, excited
the fears of her enemies, and the hopes of Richelieu. He wrote instantly
to Court, to proffer his services towards bringing about an
accommodation. In the difficulty of the moment, the King and his
favourite accepted the offer. Richelieu was released from exile, and
allowed to join the Queen at Angoulême, where he laboured certainly to
bring about a reconciliation. This was not, however, such as the Court
could have wished. De Luynes, the favourite, accused the Bishop of Luçon
of betraying him. The Queen sought to regain her ancient authority; the
Court wished to quiet and content her without this sacrifice; and both
parties, accordingly, after seeming and nominal agreements, fell off
again from each other. De Luynes sought a support in the family of
Condé; whilst Mary de Medici, refusing to repair to Paris, and keeping
in her towns of surety on the Loire, flattered the Huguenots, and
endeavoured to bind them to her party. On this occasion Richelieu became
intimately acquainted with the designs and intrigues and spirit of the
Reformers.