The closing decade of Rubens’s life is represented by five pictures
of considerable importance. Of _Queen Tomyris with the Head of Cyrus_
(No. 2084) there is an earlier, large, and deservedly famous version in
Lord Darnley’s collection; but the Louvre picture exceeds it in beauty
of design and in unity of colour. It was painted about the same time
(_cca._ 1632) as _Religion crowned by a Genius_ (No. 2126), one of the
sketches for the ceiling at Whitehall. Of peculiar interest, owing to
its unfinished state which reveals the master’s method of portraiture,
is the superb portrait group of _Hélène Fourment, the Artist’s Second
Wife, and Two of her Children_ (No. 2113, Plate XXII.). Only the heads,
which are remarkable for an intensity of expression that is rarely to
be found in Rubens’s paintings, are finished. All the rest is loosely
and thinly sketched in sepia heightened with swift touches of brighter
colour. It was painted about 1636, which is also the approximate date
of _A Flemish Kermesse_ (No. 2115), an almost unique instance of the
master applying the exuberant energy of his magic brush to a subject in
which the expression of intense vitality and full-blooded sensuousness
assumes the aspect almost of bestiality—which, however, in no way
detracts from the artistic value of the painting. To turn from this to
_A Joust by the Moat of a Castle_ (No. 2116) is to pass from coarse
realism to pure romanticism, inspired probably by the associations of
the picturesque Castle of Steen, which Rubens had bought in 1635, and
which forms the setting for this scene of knightly prowess. This, and
the marvellous and strangely modern little _Landscape_ (No. 2117), in
which the morning sun is seen rising from the autumnal mist, belong to
the closing years of Rubens’s life. He died at Antwerp on May 20, 1640.