the preface we learn that he was perfectly delighted to see the “old
style known as barbarous, or Gothic, go out of fashion, to the great
honor of the country, and disappear from Flanders, giving place to
symmetrical buildings designed by men of better taste and conforming to
the rules of the Greek and Roman antique.”
Rubens was a favorite with several kings and when he was neither
painting nor teaching, he was visiting some foreign court on an
embassy. On one of these visits to London in 1629–30 he was knighted by
Charles I.
In 1630 he married again (Isabella Brandt having died in 1626), uniting
himself to his first wife’s niece, Helena Fourment, who was but
sixteen. Rubens now built a palatial house in Antwerp, where, as well
as in his _Château de Steen_ in the vicinity, he lived a happy,
industrious, and splendid life, having everything the world could give
in the way of honors and joys. Rubens’s influence upon the artists of
his own time was very great and he dominated the entire art taste of
Europe during the first three quarters of the Seventeenth Century.
Religious subjects, mythological subjects, landscapes, hunting scenes,
portraits, and still-life,--everything came easily to his brush. Sir
Joshua Reynolds wrote a fine analysis of Rubens, in which he says: “The
striking brilliancy of his colors, and their lively opposition to each
other, the flowing liberty and freedom of his outline, the animated
pencil with which every object is touched, all contribute to awaken
and keep alive the attention of the spectator; awaken in him, in some
measure, correspondent sensations, and make him feel a degree of that
enthusiasm with which the painter was carried away. To this we may add
the complete uniformity in all the parts of the work, so that the whole
seems to be conducted and grow out of one mind: everything is of a
piece and fits its place.
“Besides the excellency of Rubens in these general powers, he possessed
the true art of imitating. He saw the objects of nature with a
painter’s eye; he saw at once the predominant feature by which every
object is known and distinguished; and as soon as seen, it was executed
with a facility that is astonishing. Rubens was, perhaps, the greatest
master in the mechanical part of the art, the best workman with his
tools, that ever exercised a pencil.
“This power which Rubens possessed in the highest degree enabled him
to represent whatever he undertook better than any other painter. His
animals, particularly lions and horses, are so admirable that it may
be said they were never properly represented but by him. His portraits
rank with the best works of the painters who have made that branch of
art the sole business of their lives; and of those he has left a great
variety of specimens. The same may be said of his landscapes.
“The difference of the manner of Rubens from that of any other painter
before him is in nothing more distinguishable than in his coloring,
which is totally different from that of Titian, Correggio, or any of
the great colorists. The effect of his pictures may be not improperly
compared to clusters of flowers; all his colors appear as clear and as
beautiful; at the same time he has avoided that tawdry effect which one
would expect such gay colors to produce; in this respect resembling
Barocci more than any other painter. What was said of an ancient
painter may be applied to those two artists, that their figures look as
if they fed upon roses.”
RINALDO AND ARMIDA.
_Sir Anthony Van Dyck
(1599–1641)._
_Collection of
Mr. Jacob Epstein._
This picture, oils on canvas (90 × 96 inches), came from the Collection
of the Duke of Newcastle, Clumber Park, Nottinghamshire, to its present
home in Baltimore.
Rinaldo is in shining, silver-blue armor with a flowing mantle of
golden yellow, which is clasped at the shoulder. Armida wears a blue
robe and a red mantle. The sky is blue with white clouds and there is a
tree in the background and an enchanted lake at the right.
The influence of Van Dyck’s master, Rubens, is very apparent in this
gorgeous picture, where all the delights of the Garden of Armida are
set forth--that magic garden that Tasso described in his _Jerusalem
Delivered_, to which many a Crusader was lured.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Jacob Epstein_
RINALDO AND ARMIDA
--_Sir Anthony Van Dyck_]
Another _Rinaldo and Armida_ by Van Dyck is in the Louvre.
Armida was a beautiful sorceress; and it was difficult to resist her
enchantment. Two messengers were sent from the Christian Army with a
talisman to effect Rinaldo’s escape. Armida followed Rinaldo and, not
being able to regain her power over him, rushed into the combat and was
killed. Rinaldo came of the noble Este family and ran away at the age
of fifteen to join the Crusaders. He was enrolled in the “Adventurers
Squadron” and is often called the “Achilles of the Christian Army.”
Anthony, or Antoon, van Dyck, was born at Antwerp in 1599, son of a
silk-merchant. At the age of ten he became the pupil of Henrik van
Balen and entered Rubens’s studio as assistant in 1618, when only
seventeen. He soon achieved a reputation for his portraits and visited
England. In 1621, by Rubens’s advice, he went to Italy, having already
acquired a reputation. After a five years’ stay, much of which time
was spent in Genoa, Van Dyck returned home and painted his celebrated
picture of the _Crucifixion_ for the Church of St. Michael in
Ghent, which established his reputation. In 1630 he again visited
England; but, not meeting with the reception he had anticipated,
he returned to Antwerp. However, in 1632, Charles I, who had seen a
portrait of his Chapelmaster by Van Dyck, sent for him to come to
England. On this occasion the painter was warmly welcomed, lodged by
the King at Blackfriars, and, in the following year was knighted and
given a pension for life. Van Dyck was the second painter to have
an English Knighthood. Thenceforward Van Dyck lived very grandly,
having a town house and also a country house at Eltham. He was always
magnificently dressed, had numerous coaches and horses, and kept so
good a table that few princes were better served. Van Dyck died in
London in 1641, at the age of forty-two, having left a prodigious
amount of work and a fortune of £20,000 sterling, notwithstanding his
expensive manner of living. He was buried in Old St. Paul’s, near the
tomb of John of Gaunt; but his remains, of course, perished in the
Great Fire of 1666.
In the short span of his life--forty-two years--he painted nearly a
thousand pictures. Van Dyck has three styles. The first is his Italian
period; the second, his Flemish period, dating from his return from
Italy in 1626 to his departure for England in 1631; and the third, his
English period, from 1631 to 1641. The latter period is the greatest
and the most distinguished for grace, elegance, and aristocratic
quality.
“More noble than Rubens in his choice of form,” writes Charles Blanc,
“Van Dyck had fewer faults than his master, but perhaps also less
grandeur. His color was as charming without being so splendid. His
design was learned, but without pedantry; and his contours were always
governed by the sentiment of grace, or fire of genius. Very nearly
the equal of Titian in portraiture, Van Dyck has sometimes risen to a
great height in his historical compositions, in which the beauty of the
expression is often as admirable as the excellence of the touch.”
DÆDALUS AND ICARUS.
_Sir Anthony Van Dyck
(1599–1641)._
_Collection of
Mr. Frank P. Wood._
A treasure of art, long in England in the famous Collection of the late
Earl Spencer, K. G., at Althorp, Northumberland, is Van Dyck’s poetic
version of the ancient Greek myth regarding man’s attempt at flight.
Van Dyck was so fond of this subject that he painted it more than once.
This work is an oil painting on canvas (46 × 35 inches).
The figures are nearly life-size and very finely modelled. Icarus
is nude save for a red drapery caught around the waist by a narrow
band of bluish green,--a rather strange aviator’s suit to our way of
thinking to-day! The position of his right hand would seem to tell us
that Icarus is about to speak to his father, who, standing behind him,
has apparently just fastened on his son’s wings and who appears to be
giving him that sage advice about flying too near the sun. The flashing
eyes and knitted brow of young Icarus indicate that this advice is not
relished.
Max Rooses has noted that Icarus is not unlike the Angels that Van Dyck
was fond of painting; calls attention to his beautiful, waving, golden
hair; and finds a strong likeness between Icarus and the artist himself
in his youth. One of the wings shows a white interior and the other, in
the shadow, a bluish green exterior.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Frank P. Wood_
DÆDALUS AND ICARUS
--_Sir Anthony Van Dyck_]
Dædalus was a mythical personage under whom the Greek writers
personified the earliest development of human flight and also the arts
of sculpture and architecture. Some traditions represent Dædalus as of
the royal race of the Erechthidæ and others make him a Cretan. Dædalus
devoted himself to sculpture and taught his sister’s son, Talus, who
soon surpassed him. Consequently, in envy Dædalus killed this young
rival. Condemned to death in Athens for this murder, Dædalus fled to
Crete, where his fame won him the friendship of King Minos. When Queen
Pasiphae gave birth to the Minotaur, Dædalus constructed the Labyrinth
at Cnossus in which the Minotaur was kept; and for doing this King
Minos imprisoned him. However, Pasiphae released him. This was of not
much advantage, however, because King Minos had seized all the ships
on the coast of Crete. “Necessity is the mother of invention:” Dædalus
had to get away. The question was “how?”. The result was that Dædalus
made wings for himself and for his son, Icarus, and fastened them on
the shoulders with wax, cautioning the youth not to fly too close to
the sun. Icarus would not pay attention to this advice and, flying too
high, the wax melted and he dropped down and was drowned in that part
of the Ægean Sea, which is now called after him the Icarian Sea.
Dædalus, however, flew safely over the Ægean and reached Sicily, where
he was protected by Cocalus, King of that Island. When King Minos heard
where Dædalus had taken refuge he sailed with a great fleet to Sicily;
but was murdered there by Cocalus. According to some accounts, Dædalus
alighted on his flight from Crete at Cumæ in Italy, where he erected a
temple to Apollo in which he offered the wings with which he had flown.
Like Lindberg, his descendant, he placed his “We” in a museum!
Many works of art were attributed to Dædalus in Greece, Italy, Egypt,
and the islands of the Mediterranean. Also the Greeks gave the name
of Dædala to the ancient wooden statues of the gods ornamented with
gilding, bright colors, and real drapery.
It is appropriate to add here a sonnet by an old French poet, Philippe
Desportes (1545–1606) entitled “Icare”:
_ICARE_
_Icare est chut ici, le jeune audacieux,
Qui pour voler au ciel eut assez de courage:
Ici tomba son corps dégarni de plumage,
Laissant tous braves cœurs de sa chute envieux._
_O bienheureux travail d’un esprit glorieux,
Qui tire un grand gain d’un si petit dommage!
O bienheureux malheur plein de tant d’avantage,
Qu’il rende le vaincu des ans victorieux!_
_Un chemin si nouveau n’étonna sa jeunesse,
Le pouvoir lui faillit, mais non le hardiesse;
Il eut pour le brûler des astres le plus beau;_
_Il mourut poursuivant une haute aventure;
Le ciel fut son désir, la mer sa sépulture;
Est-il plus beau dessein, ou plus riche tombeau?_
ROBERT RICH, EARL OF WARWICK.
_Sir Anthony Van Dyck
(1599–1641)._
_Collection of
Mr. Jules S. Bache._
In silver doublet with slashed sleeves embroidered with flowers,
crimson knee-breeches edged with gold braid, pink silk stockings and
white shoes with lace rosettes (or “shoe roses,” as they were called
in those days), a crimson cloak thrown over his left shoulder and held
by his gloved hand, white lawn collar and cuffs edged with handsome
lace, Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, stands before us, a picture of
elegance, manly beauty, and aristocratic _hauteur_. He is standing
full front with his head turned three-quarters to the left, in which
direction he is also looking, and he is holding his black felt hat in
his right hand. His armor and _bâton_ of command are lying on the
ground by his side. The embroidered curtain in the background does not
prevent us from seeing a naval engagement on his right.
Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, came of very distinguished ancestry on
the maternal line, for his mother was Penelope Devereux, the sister of
Essex, whose mother, Lettice Knollys, had been Maid of Honor to Queen
Elizabeth (and who captivated the Earl of Leicester), and whose father,
Walter Devereux, was first Earl of Essex (died 1576). Penelope’s father
had wished her to marry Sir Philip Sidney; but the Earl of Huntingdon,
Penelope’s guardian, ruled otherwise and forced her to marry Lord
Rich, “a man of independent fortune and a known estate but otherwise
of an uncourtly disposition, unsociable, austere, and of no agreeable
conversation to her.”
Lady Rich, the most beautiful woman in all London, particularly famous
for her sparkling black eyes, plunged wildly into society and was the
most admired and courted woman of the Court. She played, too, a leading
part in the rebellion of her distinguished brother, Essex. Lady Rich
lives in literature as Sidney’s Stella. The romance between these
lovers, “Astrophel and Stella,” never cooled. When Sidney learned of
Penelope’s marriage to “the rich Lord Rich,” he played with her new
name as follows:
“Towards Aurora’s court a nymph doth dwell,
Rich in all beauties which man’s eye can see;
Beauties so far from reach of words that we
Abase her praise saying she doth excel:
Rich in those gifts which give the eternal crown;
Who, though most rich in these and every part
Which makes the patents of true worldly bliss,
Hath no misfortune but that Rich she is.”
Lord Rich was created Earl of Warwick in 1618; but he had been divorced
from Lady Rich in 1605, thirteen years before he succeeded to this
title. On obtaining her divorce Lady Rich then married Charles Blount,
Earl of Devonshire and eighth Baron Mountjoy, who, in defense of his
marriage, wrote the following:
“A lady of great birth and virtue being in the power of her friends,
was by them married against her will unto one against whom she did
protest at the very solemnity and ever after; between whom, from the
first day, there ensued continued discord, although the same fears that
forced her to marry constrained her to live with him. Instead of a
comforter, he did study in all things to torment her; and by fear and
fraud, did practice to deceive her of her dowry.”
Sidney was always writing of Stella’s marvellous black eyes and their
shining rays:
“When nature made her chief work, Stella’s eyes,
In color black, why wrapt she beams so bright?
Would she in beauty black, like painter wise,
Fame daintiest lustre, mixt of shades and light?
Or did she else that sober hue devise
In object best to knit and strength our sight;
Least, if no veil these brave gleams did disguise,
They, sunlike, should more dazzle than delight?
Or would she her miraculous power show,
That, whereas black seems Beauty’s contrary,
She even in black doth make all beauties flow?
Both so, and thus--she, minding Love should be
Placed even there, gave his this mourning weed
To honor all their deaths who for her bleed.”
There is every reason, therefore, why the subject of this picture
should be so handsome, so distinguished, and so fascinating.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. Jules S. Bache_
ROBERT RICH, EARL OF WARWICK
--_Sir Anthony Van Dyck_]
Robert Rich was born in 1587 and was admitted to Emmanuel College,
Cambridge, in 1603 and in that year was created a Knight of the Bath.
He was quite old enough to have remembered the exciting days of the
Essex conspiracy, the part his mother took in this, her imprisonment
and release, and his uncle’s execution in 1601. At the age of
twenty-three he was elected to Parliament and was again elected in
1614. In 1619 he succeeded to the title.
Robert Rich was one of the original members of the Company for the
Plantation of the Bermudas in 1614 and was granted a seat on the
Council of the New England Company in 1620, which two great enterprises
connect this handsome lord with our own country. Also in 1624 Robert
Rich was made a member of the Council of the Virginia Government. Yet
this was not all. Warwick’s Colonial interests brought him into close
relation with the leading men of the Puritan Party and link his name
with the early history of the New England Colonies. He was closely
associated with the origin of Connecticut, for in 1632 he granted to
Lord Say, Lord Brooke, John Hampden, and others what is known as “the
old patent of Connecticut,” under which the town of Saybrook (named for
Lord Say and Lord Brooke) was founded.
In English politics Warwick opposed the policy of Charles I and,
consequently, after the dissolution of the Short Parliament, he was
arrested by the King’s order.
As temporal head of the Puritans and opposed to the party in the
Established Church led by Archbishop Laud, Warwick concurred in
the prosecution of Archbishop Laud and the Earl of Strafford. In
1643 Warwick was appointed Lord High Admiral of the Fleet, serving
Parliament in opposition to Charles I, and he bore the title of
Governor-in-Chief of all the islands and other plantations subject
to the English Crown, on which authority he became associated with
the founding of the Colony of Rhode Island. After the monarchy and
the House of Lords had both been swept away, the Earl of Warwick gave
his support and encouragement to Oliver Cromwell. The marriage of
Cromwell’s daughter to Warwick’s grandson proves the strength of the
friendship. The Earl of Warwick died on April 19, 1658, and was buried
at Felsted, Essex. He had been three times married.
This picture, in oils on canvas (83 × 49 inches), belonged in the
Collection of the Marquess of Breadalbane, Taymouth Castle, Scotland,
and to the Collection of the Hon. Mrs. Robert Baillie-Hamilton,
Langton, Duns, Scotland.
QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA WITH JEFFREY HUDSON AND A MONKEY.
_Sir Anthony Van Dyck
(1599–1641)._
_Collection of
Mr. William Randolph Hearst._
This full-length portrait in oils on canvas (85¼ × 52 inches) was
painted in 1633, the year that Van Dyck was knighted and when he
had been about a year in the service of Charles I. Its pedigree is
interesting. The painting was in the possession of the Newports, Earls
Bradford of the first creation, and was left in 1762, on the death
of the fifth Earl, to his sister, Diana, Countess of Mountrath. From
the Countess of Mountrath it descended to her son, the last Earl of
Mountrath, and from him to the first Earl of Dorchester, of Milton
Abbey, where it remained until removed by the Earl of Portarlington to
Emo Park, Queen’s County, Ireland. In 1881 Thomas George, first Earl of
Northbrook, acquired it by exchange from the Earl of Portarlington; and
from the latter it was inherited by Francis George, the second Earl of
Northbrook, whence it came to the present owner.
The Queen of Charles I, proud and handsome, is very French and Italian
in general style; for be it remembered that Henrietta Maria was the
daughter of the gallant King Henry of Navarre and his second wife,
Marie de’ Medici, and that she was, consequently, the sister of Louis
XIII (see page 176).
The Queen has brown hair curled in “ringlets” and one “ringlet” falls
on her shoulder. Her face is oval and delicate and her eyes are brown.
She is standing at full length on a step with her head slightly turned
to the left, dressed in a blue silk gown (of the shade we now call
“Alice blue”), trimmed with narrow gold braid, and a large black felt
hat with a white plume, lace collar and a kerchief over her shoulders
with two pink bows in front. Beautifully painted frills of lace adorn
the elbow sleeves. With her left hand she touches a stiff fold in
her dress and with her right hand she caresses a little brown monkey
perched on the shoulder of Jeffrey Hudson, the famous dwarf. The little
dwarf is about thirteen years of age and is much under size. He has
light hair and the slightly wizened face that usually goes with this
kind of freak. Indeed our little Jeffrey looks not unlike the pictures
of the famous “Gen. Tom Thumb” of Barnum days in the mid-Nineteenth
Century. Jeffrey Hudson wears a suit of brick-dust red velvet, a lace
collar, and long, brown boots.
In the background, to the left, there is a stone wall and upon it
a flower-pot holding an orange tree, and farther away we note some
trees and, still farther beyond, the sky. To the right of the fluted
pillar on the right, there is a sort of ledge or shelf covered with a
brilliant orange silk curtain on which rests a crown of gold studded
with pearls, which informs us of the presence of Royalty.
Queen Henrietta Maria was born in 1609, the year before her father,
Henri IV, King of France, was assassinated. In 1624, when she was about
fifteen, the Prince of Wales offered marriage; and this was consented
to by her brother, Louis XIII, on condition that the English Roman
Catholics should be relieved from the enforcement of the penal laws. In
June, 1625, Henrietta Maria was married by proxy and went to England,
thus encumbered with political and religious pledges that were certain
to bring unpopularity upon everybody concerned. The Prince of Wales had
now become King of England and he soon found an excuse for breaking his
promise to relieve the English Roman Catholics. This course of action
offended the Queen deeply. The early years of Charles’s married life
were very unhappy and the favorite, the dashing Buckingham, fanned the
flames of the King’s discontent. After the assassination of Buckingham
in 1628, the King and Queen became deeply attached to each other; and
from that moment the bond of affection that united them was never
loosened.
[Illustration:
_Collection of Mr. William Randolph Hearst_
QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA WITH JEFFREY HUDSON AND A MONKEY
--_Sir Anthony Van Dyck_]
For a number of years Henrietta Maria’s chief interests lay with her
young family. Her children were: Charles II (born 1630); Mary, Princess
of Orange (born 1631); James, Duke of York, afterwards James II, (born
1633); Elizabeth (born 1636); Henry, Duke of Gloucester (born 1640);
and Henrietta, Duchesse d’Orléans (born 1644). The Queen also delighted
in the amusements of the gay and brilliant Court. With political
matters she had nothing to do until 1637, when she opened a diplomatic
communication with the See of Rome, to help her co-religionists. She
appointed an agent to reside in Rome and Rome sent to her a Papal agent
(a Scotchman named George Conn), who soon made many converts among the
English nobility and gentry.
Protestant England took alarm and, therefore, the Queen became very
unpopular. When the Scottish troubles broke out Queen Henrietta Maria
raised money from her fellow Catholics to support the King’s army on
the Borders in 1639; and in 1640, during the sitting of the Short
Parliament, the Queen urged her husband to oppose himself to the House
of Commons in defence of the Catholics. When the Long Parliament met,
the Catholics were believed to be the authors and agents of every
arbitrary scheme supposed to have entered into the plans of Strafford
or Laud. During the Long Parliament Henrietta Maria urged the Pope to
lend money to enable her to restore her husband’s authority and she
threw herself heart and soul into the schemes for rescuing Strafford
and coercing Parliament. The Army Plot, the schemes for using Scotland
against England, and the attempt upon the five members--Pym, Hampden,
Haselrig, Hoiles, and Strode--were the fruits of her political activity.