Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/55

Rh RUBENS 43 nevertheless which could give a wider scope to artistic enterprise. Spain and the United Provinces were for a time at peace ; almost all the churches had been stripped of their adornments ; monastic orders were powerful and richly endowed, guilds and corporations eager to show the fervour of their Catholic faith, now that the " monster of heresy " seemed for ever quelled. Here were opportunities without number for painters as well as sculptors and architects. Gothic churches began to be decorated accord- ing to the new fashion adopted in Italy. Altars magnified to monuments, sometimes reaching the full height of the vaulted roof, displayed, between their twisted columns, pictures of a size hitherto unknown. No master seemed better fitted to be associated with this kind of painting than Rubens, whose works we have already met with in churches newly erected at Rome, Genoa, and Mantua, by the Jesuits, in the gorgeous style which bears their name, and which Rubens commends in the preface to his Palazzi di Genova (Antwerp, 1622). The temple erected by the reverend fathers in Antwerp was almost entirely the painter's work, and if he did not, as we often find asserted, design the front, he certainly was the inspirer of the whole building, which, after all, was but a reminiscence of the churches in Genoa. And the temple of the Jesuits in Antwerp remained for a century the only example of its kind in Belgium. Hitherto no Fleming had undertaken to paint ceilings with foreshortened figures, and blend the religious with the decorative art after the style of those buildings which are met with in Italy, and owe their decora- tions to masters like Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto. No less than forty ceilings were composed by Rubens, and painted under his direction in the space of two years. All were destroyed by fire in 1718. Sketches in water- c.Jour were taken some time before the disaster by De Wit, and from these were made the etchings by Punt which alone enable us to form a judgment of the grandiose under- taking. In the Madrid Gallery we find a general view of the church in all its splendour. The present church of St Charles in Antwerp is, externally, with some alteration, the building here alluded to. Rubens delighted in undertakings of the vastest kind. " The large size of a picture," he writes to W. Trumbull in 1621, "gives us painters more courage to represent our ideas with the utmost freedom and semblance of reality. .... I confess myself to be, by a natural instinct, better fitted to execute works of the largest size." The correctness of this appreciation he was very soon called upon to demonstrate most strikingly by a series of twenty- four pictures, illustrating the life of Mary de' Medici, queen-mother of France. The gallery at the Luxembourg Palace, which these paintings once adorned, has long since disappeared, and the complete work is now exhibited in the Louvre. Drawings, it seems, had been asked from Quentin Varin, the French master who incited Poussin to become a painter, but Rubens was ultimately preferred. This preference may in some degree be ascribed to his former connexion with the court at Mantua, Mary de' Medici and the duchess of Gonzaga being sisters. The story of Mary de' Medici may be regarded as a poem in painting, and no person conversant with the literature of the time can fail to recognize that strange mixture of the sacred and the mythological in which the most admired authors of the 17th century, beginning with Malherbe, delight. Absolutely speaking, Mrs Jameson may be right in criticizing Rubens's " coarse allegories, historical impro- prieties, &c."; but a man belongs to his time, and uses its language in order to make himself understood. From the cradle to the day of her reconciliation with Louis XIII., we follow Mary de' Medici after the manner in which it was customary in those days to consider personages of superior rank. The Fates for her have spun the silken and golden thread ; Juno watches over her birth and intrusts her to the town of Florence ; Minerva, the Graces, and Apollo take charge of her education ; Love exhibits her image to the king, and Neptune conveys her across the seas; Justice, Health, and Plenty endow her son ; Prudence and Generosity are at her sides during the regency; and, when she resigns the helm of the state to the prince, Justice, Strength, Religion, and Fidelity hold the oars. The sketches of all these paintings now in the Munich Gallery were painted in Antwerp, a numerous staff of distinguished collaborators being intrusted with the final execution. But the master himself spent much time in Paris, retouching the whole work, which was completed within less than four years. On May 13, 1625, Rubens writes from Paris to his friend Peiresc that both the queen and her son are highly satisfied with his paintings, and that Louis XIII. came on purpose to the Luxembourg, " where he never has set foot since the palace was begun sixteen or eighteen years ago." We also gather from this letter that the picture representing the Felicity of the Regency was painted to replace another, the Departure of the Queen, which had caused some offence. " If I had been let alone," he says, "the other subjects would have been better accepted by the court, and without scandal or murmur." " And I fear," he adds, " far greater difficulties will be found with the subjects of the next gallery." Richelieu gave himself some trouble to get this part of the work, intended to represent the life of Henry IV., bestowed upon Cavalier d'Arpina, but did not succeed in his endea- vours. The queen's exile, however, prevented the under- taking from going beyond a few sketches, and two or three panels, one of which, the Triumph of Henry IV., now in the Palazzo Pitti, is one of the noblest works of Rubens or of any master. Most undoubtedly the painter here calls to his aid his vivid recollections of the Triumph of Caesar by Mantegna, now at Hampton Court, but in his day adorning the palace at Mantua ; of this he made a copy, inscribed No. 315 in the catalogue of his effects sold in 1640, and now in the National Gallery. On the llth of May 1625 Rubens was present at the nuptials of Henrietta Maria at Notre Dame in Paris, when the scaffolding on which he stood gave way, and he tells us he was just able to catch an adjoining tribune. No painter in Europe could now pretend to equal Rubens either in talent or in renown. Month after month productions of amazing size left the Antwerp studio ; and to those unacquainted with the master's pictures mag- nificent engravings by Vorsterman, Pontius, and others had conveyed singularly striking interpretations. " What- ever work of his I may require," writes Moretus, the cele- brated Antwerp printer, " I have to ask him six months before, so as that he may think of it at leisure, and do the work on Sundays or holidays ; no week days of his could I pretend to get under a hundred florins." Of the numerous creations of his pencil, none, perhaps, will more thoroughly disclose to us his comprehension of religious decorative art than the Assumption of the Virgin at the high altar of the Antwerp cathedral, finished in 1625. It is, of twenty repetitions of this subject, the only example still preserved at the place it was intended by the painter to occupy. In spirit we are here reminded of Titian's Assunta in the cathedral at Verona, but Rubens's proves perhaps a higher conception of the subject. The work is seen a considerable way off, and every outline is bathed in light, so that the Virgin is elevated to dazzling glory with a power of ascension, scarcely, if ever, attained by any master. Able to rely so greatly on his power as a colourist, Rubens is not a mere decorator. He penetrates into the