Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/53

Rh S H R U B 41 RSHEFF. See RZFEFF. RUBBER. See INDIA-RUBBER. RUBENS, PETER PAUL (1577-1640), the most eminent representative of Flemish art, and one of the greatest painters of any school, was born very probably at Siegen, in Westphalia, on the 29th of June 1577. Till some thirty years ago Cologne might still claim the honour of having been the master's birthplace ; the Rhenish city is mentioned by Rubens himself, in one of his letters, as closely connected with his childhood, and through his father's epitaph we learn that for more than nineteen years Cologne was the family's place of refuge amid the disturbances prevailing in the Low Countries. This, however, has been proved to be but part of the truth, and, if Rubens's parents certainly during several years did live at Cologne, they also resided elsewhere, and that for reasons so strong that both wife and husband might well desire to see them for ever buried in secrecy. Although of humble descent, his father was a druggist, John Rubens was a man of learning. He had studied law at home and abroad, and became councillor and alder- man in his native town (1562). A Catholic by birth, it was not long before he became, like many of his countrymen, a zealous upholder of the Reformation, and we even find him spoken of by a contemporary as " le plus docte Calviniste qui fust pour lors au Bas Pays." After the plundering of the Antwerp churches in 1566, the magistrates were called upon for a justification. While openly they declared themselves devoted sons of the church, a list of the followers of the Reformed creed, headed by the name of Anthony Van Stralen, the burgomaster, got into the hands of the duke of Alva. This was a sentence of death for the magistrates, and John Rubens lost no time in quitting Spanish soil, ultimately settling at Cologne (October 1568), with his wife and four children. In his new residence he became legal adviser to Anne of Saxony, the second wife of the prince of Orange, William the Silent. Before long it was discovered that their relations were not purely of a business kind. Thrown into the dungeons of Dillenburg, Rubens lingered there for many months, his wife, Maria Pypelinc.x, never relaxing her endeavours to get the undutiful husband restored to freedom. Two years elapsed before the prisoner was released, and then only to be confined to the small town of Siegen. Here he lived with his family, from 1573 to 1578, and here most probably Maria Pypelincx gave birth to Philip, afterwards town-clerk of Antwerp, and Peter Paul. A year after (May 1578) the Antwerp lawyer got leave to return to Cologne, where he died on the 18th of March 1587, after having, it is said, returned to Catho- licism. As there are at Siegen no records going back to the 16th century, the facts relating to the birth of Peter Paul Rubens must, of course, remain conjectural, but his mother certainly was at Siegen a few days before his birth, for we find her there, petitioning in favour of John Rubens, on June 14, 1577. Rubens went to Antwerp with his mother when he was scarcely ten years of age, and made good progress in his classical studies, which he had begun with the Jesuits at Cologne. An excellent Latin scholar, he was also pro- ficient in French, Italian, English, German, and Dutch. Part of his boyhood he spent as a page in the household of the countess of Lalaing, in Brussels ; but, tradition adds, and we may well believe, the youth's disposition was such as to induce his mother to allow him to follow his proper vocation, choosing as his master Tobias Verhaecht, who was in some way connected with the family. Not the slightest trace of this first master's influence can be detected in Rubens's works. Not so with Adam Van Noort, to whom the young man was next apprenticed. Van Noort, whose aspect of energy is well known through Van Dyck's beautiful etching, was the highly esteemed master of num- erous painters, among them Van Balen, Sebastian Vrancx, and Jordaens, later his son-in-law. His pictures are almost exclusively to be found in Antwerp churches. Rubens remained with Van Noort for the usual period of four years, thereafter studying under Otto Voenius or Van Veen, a gentleman by birth, a most distinguished Latin scholar, and a painter of very high repute. He was a native of Leyden, and only recently settled in Antwerp, but the town gave him numerous commissions of import- ance. Though Rubens never adopted his style of painting, the tastes of master and pupil had much in common, and some pictures by Otto Vcenius can be pointed out as having inspired Rubens at a more advanced period. For example, the Magdalene anointing Christ's Feet, painted for the cathedral at Malaga, and now at the Hermitage in St Petersburg, closely resembles in composition the very im- portant work of Otto Voenius in the church at Bergues near Dunkirk. In 1598, Adam Van Noort acting as dean of the Ant- werp guild of painters, Rubens was officially recognized as " master," that is, was allowed to work independently and receive pupils. We have no means of forming an idea of his style at this early period, two years before his journey to Italy, but even the somewhat later works found at Genoa, Mantua, and Rome differ considerably from what may be termed the Rubenesque. From 1600 to the latter part of 1608 Rubens belonged to the household of Vincenzo Gonzaga, duke of Mantua. Few princes in Italy surpassed the Gonzagas in splendour. For them Mantegna, Giulio Romano, Titian, and Prima- ticcio had produced some of their most admired works, and their now deserted palaces still bear traces of the richest decoration. To the Mantuan collection the Pitti palace, the Louvre, and the royal galleries of England owe some of their noblest specimens of Italian art. How Rubens came to be engaged at Mantua has not been explained. The duke, it is known, spent some time at Venice in July 1600, and is supposed there to have met his future painter, but it is also to be remembered that another Fleming, Francis Pourbus the younger, was at the time employed by him in taking the likeness of the prettiest women of the day ; and Rubens, much against his will, was also, at first, it seems, intrusted with a similar task. The influence of the master's stay at Mantua was of extreme importance, and cannot be too constantly kept in view in the study of his later works. Sent to Rome in 1601, to take copies from Raphael for his master, he was also commissioned to paint several pictures for the church of Santa Croce, by the archduke Albert of Austria, sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands, and once, when he was a cardinal, the titular of that see. A copy of Mercury and Psyche after Raphael is preserved in the museum at Pesth. The religious paintings the Invention of the Cross, the Crowning with Thorns, and the Crucifixion are to be found in the hospital at Grasse in Provence. At the beginning of 1603 "The Fleming," as he was termed at Mantua, was sent to Spain with a variety of presents for Philip III. and his minister the duke of Lerma, and thus had opportunity to spend a whole year at Madrid and become acquainted with some of Titian's masterpieces. Two of his own works, known to belong to the same period, are in the Madrid Gallery, Heraclitus and Democritus. Of Rubens's abilities so far back as 1604 we get a more complete idea from an immense picture now in the Antwerp Gallery, the Baptism of Our Lord, originally pain-ted for the Jesuits at Mantua. Here it may be seen to what degree Italian surroundings had XXI. 6