Of all quaint places this is one of the most charming. I have been
rather troubled that antiquity has fled before me where I have gone.
It is a fatality of travelling that the sense of novelty dies away, so
that we do not realize that we are seeing any thing extraordinary. I
wanted to see something as quaint as Nuremberg in Longfellow's poem,
and have but just found it. These high-gabled old Flemish houses, nine
steps to each gable! The cathedral, too, affects me more in externals
than any yet. And the spire looks as I expected that of Strasbourg
would. As to the grammarye of bells and chimes, I deliver that over to
Charlie. But--I have seen Rubens's painting! Before I came to Europe,
Longfellow said to me, "You must go to Antwerp, to see Rubens."
"I do not think I shall like Rubens," was my reply.
"But you will, though. Yet never judge till you have been to Antwerp."
So, during our various meanders, I kept my eye with a steady resolve
on this place. I confess I went out to see the painting without much
enthusiasm. My experience with Correggio's Notte, and some of the
celebrities of Dresden, was not encouraging. I was weary, too, with
sightseeing. I expected to find an old, dim picture, half spoiled by
cleaning, which I should be required to look into shape, by an
exercise of my jaded imagination.
Alter coming down from hearing the chimes, we went into a side room,
and sat down before the painting. My first sensation was of
astonishment, blank, absolute, overwhelming. After all that I had
seen, I had no idea of a painting like this. I was lifted off my feet,
as much as by Cologne cathedral, or Niagara Falls, so that I could
neither reason nor think whether I was pleased or not. It is
difficult, even now, to analyze the sources of this wonderful power.
The excellence of this picture does not lie, like Raphael's, in a
certain ideal spirituality, by which the scene is raised above earth
to the heavenly sphere; but rather in a power, strong, human, almost
homely, by which, not an ideal, but the real scene is forced home upon
the heart.
_Christ is dead_,--dead to your eye as he was to the eye of Mary
and of John. Death absolute, hopeless, is written in the faded majesty
of that face, peaceful and weary; death in every relaxed muscle. And,
surely, in painting this form, some sentiment of reverence and
devotion softened into awestruck tenderness that hand commonly so
vigorous; for, instead of the almost coarse vitality which usually
pervades his manly figures, there is shed over this a spiritualized
refinement, not less, but more than human, as if some heavenly voice
whispered, "This is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world!"
The figures of the disciples are real and individual in expression.
The sorrow is homely, earnest, unpicturesque, and grievously heart
broken. The cheek of the kneeling Mary at his feet is wet with tears.
You cannot ask yourself whether she is beautiful or not. You only see
and sympathize with her sorrow. But the apostle John, who receives
into his arms the descending form, is the most wonderful of all.
Painters that I have seen represent him too effeminately. They forget
the ardent soul whom Jesus rebuked for wishing to bring down fire from
heaven on his enemies; they forget that it was John who was called the
son of thunder, and that his emblem in the early church was the eagle.
From the spiritualized softness of his writings we have formed another
picture, forgetting that these are the writings of an aged man, in
whom the ardor of existence has been softened by long experience of
suffering, and habits of friendship with a suffering Lord.
Rubens's conception of John is that of a vigorous and plenary manhood,
whose rush is like that of a torrent, in the very moment when his
great heart is breaking. He had loved his Master with a love like an
eternity; he had believed him; heart and soul, mind and strength--all
had he given to that kingdom which he was to set up; and he had seen
him die--die by lingering torture. And at this moment he feels it all.
There is no Christ, no kingdom--nothing! All is over. "We
_trusted_ it had been he who should have redeemed Israel." With
that miraculous, lifelike power that only Rubens has, he shows him to
us in this moment of suppressed agony; the blood choking his heart,
the veins swollen, and every muscle quivering with the grief to which
he will not give way. O, for this wonderful and deep conception, this
almost divine insight into the mysteries of that hour, one might love
Rubens. This picture cannot be engraved. No engraving is more than a
diagram, to show the places of the figures. For, besides its mesmeric
life, which no artist can reproduce, there is a balancing of colors, a
gorgeousness about it, as if he had learned coloring from the great
Master himself. Even in the overpowering human effect of this piece,
it is impossible not to perceive that every difficulty which artists
vaunt themselves on vanquishing has in this piece been conquered with
apparently instinctive ease, simply because it was habitual to do so,
and without in the least distracting the attention from the great
moral. Magical foreshortenings and wonderful effects of color appear
to be purely incidental to the expression of a great idea. I left this
painting as one should leave the work of a great religious master--
thinking more of Jesus and of John than of Rubens.
After this we went through many galleries and churches devoted to his
works; for Antwerp is Rubens's shrine. None of them impressed me, as
compared with this. One of his Madonnas, however, I must not forget to
describe, it was a conceit so just like him. Instead of the pale,
downcast, or upturned faces, which form the general types of Madonna,
he gives her to us, in one painting, as a gorgeous Oriental sultana,
leaning over a balcony, with full, dark eye and jewelled turban, and
rounded outlines, sustaining on her hand a brilliant paroquet.
Ludicrous as this conception appears in a scriptural point of view, I
liked it because there was life in it; because he had painted it from
an internal sympathy, not from a chalky, second-hand tradition.
And now, farewell to Antwerp. Art has satisfied me at last. I have
been conquered, and that is enough.
To-morrow for Paris. Adieu.