Having returned to Antwerp in 1608, and married his first wife,
Isabella Brant, in the following year, Rubens, who was now made Court
painter to Archduke Albrecht, entered upon a period of stupendous
artistic activity, which extended to about 1621, when he began to
divide his time between art and diplomatic missions, and, having
previously organised a vast studio with an army of assistants, often
left the execution of his brilliant sketch designs to less capable
hands. This early Antwerp period is not particularly well represented
at the Louvre, although the collection includes _The Virgin surrounded
by the Holy Innocents_ (No. 2078)— a Virgin of characteristic
Flemish coarseness and fulness of form, in the midst of a dense swarm
of delicious, plump, dimpled, wingless angel-children, whose rosy
baby-flesh is painted with inimitable mastery. The picture was painted
about 1615, six years before _The Virgin and Child within a Garland of
Flowers_ (No. 2079), executed in 1621 for Cardinal Federigo Borromeo.
The tasteless floral wreath in this picture, as in the similar versions
at Munich and New York, is from the brush of Jan Brueghel. To about
the year 1615 belongs also the _Christ on the Cross, with the Virgin,
the Magdalen and St. John_ (No. 2082), which can, however, hardly be
entirely from the master’s own hand. The mass of unbroken vermilion
in the robe of St. John is one of Rubens’s favourite devices at that
period. _The Resurrection of Lazarus_ (No. 2081) is the original sketch
for the Berlin picture.
In 1620, when Rubens undertook to paint a series of thirty-nine
_Miracles of SS. Ignatius Loyola and François Xavier_ for the ceiling
of the Jesuit Church at Antwerp, the business-like organisation of his
studio was an acknowledged fact, as may be gathered from the terms of
the agreement which stipulated that the master himself should provide
the designs, though the execution was to be entrusted to his most
competent assistants. The actual paintings were destroyed by fire in
1718, but of the original sketches seventeen have been preserved, and
are now distributed between the Louvre, the Vienna Academy, the Museums
of Gotha and Brussels, and the Dulwich Gallery. The four in the La Caze
collection at the Louvre are _Abraham’s Sacrifice_ (No. 2120), _Abraham
and Melchisedek_ (No. 2121), _The Elevation of the Cross_ (No. 2122),
and _The Coronation of the Virgin_ (No. 2123). The whole series, but
especially the first two of these, is remarkable for the boldness of
the foreshortening, calculated for the position of the panels on the
ceiling, and for the swift bravura and inimitable expressiveness of the
brushwork. To the same period belongs _Philopœmen recognised by an Old
Woman_ (No. 2124), which is essentially a brilliant still-life study
for a lost picture.