Page:Cyclopedia of Painters and Paintings, 1887, vol 4.djvu/123

 RUBENS with the Queen, and again in 1625. Bring- ing with him nineteen finished pictures, he remained there to finish the rest. Every effort was made to induce him to remain in France, but in vain. At Paris he had made the acquaintance of the Duke of Bucking- ham, who visited him at Antwerp and event- ually purchased his collection for about 100,000 florins. In 1626 (July) Isabella Brandt died, to the great grief of her hus- band, who honoured her with splendid fu- neral ceremonies. In 1624 Philip IV. of Spain ennobled Rubens, and the Archduch- ess Isabella made him her gentleman in waiting. In 1627 she sent him to England with the title of ambassador to act as me- diator in negotiating peace between that country and Spain. This obliged him to visit Spain in August, 1628, where he was treated with great honour by the King and became intimate with Velasquez, upon whom he had great influence. In nine months Rubens painted forty pictures and made copies of all the pictures by Titian in the Royal Gallery. In 1629, after a short visit to Antwerp, he was sent as ambassador to King Charles I., whose portrait he painted, and who on his departure created him Knight of the Golden Spur, Feb. 21, 1630. Once more he was sent to Spain to con- clude the peace negotiations with Philip IV. He then returned home and on Dec. 6, 1630, married Helena Fourment, his niece by marriage. For Charles I. Rubens then painted nine pictures, and designed for the Banquet Hall at Whitehall a ceiling representing the allegorical history of James I. He also began a series of pictures for the gallery of Henri IV. in the Luxem- bourg, six of which were far advanced when the exile of Maria de' Medici, in 1631, in- terrupted the work. In 1631 he resumed his diplomatic career, in order to bring about a peace between the North and South of the Low Countries. This entailed much trouble and annoyance upon him, and the death of his protectress, the Archduchess Isabella, in 1633, greatly afflicted him. He also suffered much with the gout, but never- theless continued to paint with the same wonderful facility and power. In 1635 he designed eleven allegorical compositions to decorate the triumphal arches raised in honour of the entrance of Ferdinand, Gov- ernor of the Low Countries, into Antwerp. His last picture, the Crucifixion of St Peter, (1638), painted for the banker Jabach, was delivered to its owner after the painter's death, and placed in the Church of St. Peter at Cologne, where it still exists. The works of this great artist, many of which were wholly for partially painted by his scholars after his designs, are between two and three thousand. Of these 286 repre- sent antique subjects, historical or mytho- logical. The following is a list of some of the most remarkable : Fall of the Damned, Suermondt Museum, Aix-la-Chapelle ; Ma- donna with Saints, Flight into Egypt, Di- ana and Nymphs surprised by Satyrs, Mara crowned by Victory, Portrait of an Orien- tal, Cassel Gallery ; Last Judgment, Lion Hunt, Fall of the Damned, Woman of the Apocalypse, Nativity, Battle of the Ama- zons (1619), Trinity, Entombment, Martyr- dom of St. Laivrence, Meleager and Atalautn, Massacre of Innocents, Samson and Delilah, Cantor and Pollux, Silenus and Satyrs, Su- sanna, Portrait of litibens and Isabella Brandt, Helena Founnent under a Colonnade, do. with her Boy, A Scholar (1635), Dr. van Thulden, Lord and Lady Arundel, Philip IV. of Spain, Old Pinakothek, Munich ; Ru- bens' Sons, eleven Portraits, Diana and her Nymphs, Wild Boar Hunt, Garden of Love, Judgment of Paris, Dresden Museum ; St. Ignatius Loyola exorcising Demons, Assump- tion, Magdalen, St. Manas Xavier Preach- ing, Portrait of Rubens, Four Quarters of the Globe, Portrait of the Archduchess Anna Mnria, Altarpiece of St. Ildefonxo, Festival of Fen us, Cimon and Iphigenia, Meleager and Atalanta, Portraits of Emperor Maxi- milian and of Philip le Bon, Vienna Mu- seum ; Rubens' Sons, History of Death of Decius Mus, Liechtenstein Gallery, Vienna ;