The Louvre owes its almost unequalled wealth in paintings by Rubens to
the master’s relations with Marie de Médicis and her Court; and to this
reason is due the fact that by far the largest portion of the fifty-one
authentic works wholly or partly from his brush, which now form part of
this great collection, date approximately from, or immediately before
and after, the time during which he was busy with the famous series
painted by order of that queen for the decoration of the Luxembourg
Palace, and now to be seen in a setting appropriate to their florid
sumptuousness in the new Rubens Gallery at the Louvre. Even so, the
collection comprises examples of every phase of the master’s colossal
activity—religious and historical compositions, allegorical paintings,
landscapes, portraits, still life, and even _genre_-pieces, like the
_Kermesse_ (No. 2115), in which he successfully competes with Teniers
on a ground peculiarly his own.
Born at Siegen in 1577, Rubens received his artistic education at
Antwerp from Tobias Verhaecht, a landscape painter, Adam van Noort,
and O. van Veen. At the age of twenty-three he went to Italy and
entered the service of Vincenzo Gonzaga of Mantua, studying in their
own country the works of the great Italian masters, and especially the
Venetians, from whose glorious colour he derived more benefit than
from his early training. With the exception of a journey to the Court
of Philip III. at Madrid, where he was sent on a mission by the Duke
of Mantua in 1603, Rubens spent the eight years from 1600 to 1608 in
the various Italian centres, and especially in Rome, where he painted,
about 1606, the little _Landscape with Ruins_ (No. 2119), which is
of interest not only as showing to what degree he was at that time
influenced by the Roman school, and by the Carracci, but also as being
the very first landscape known to have been produced by him. The same
view of the Palatine Hill is to be recognised in the background of
the _Four Philosophers_ at the Pitti Palace, and in the portrait of
Woverius in the Arenberg collection. Of about the same time, though the
figures would appear to have been added at a considerably later date,
is the _Landscape with a Rainbow_ (No. 2118).