Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/56

Rh RUBENS spirit of his subjects more deeply than, at first sight, seems consistent with his prodigious facility in execution. The Massacre of the Innocents, in the Munich Gallery, is a composition that can leave no person unmoved, mothers defending their children with nails and teeth. If Mrs Jameson terms this picture atrocious, it ought to be recol- lected how atrocious is the subject. When St Francis attempts to shelter the universe from the Saviour's wrath (Brussels Gallery), Rubens, drawing his inspiration from a passage of St Germain, " Ostendit mater filio pectus et ubera," recalls to our memory that most dramatic passage of the Iliad when Hecuba, from the walls of Troy, entreats her son Hector to spare his life. The subject is inconsistent with the spirit of Christianity, says Waagen, evidently forgetting that to Catholic eyes nothing could be more impressive than the Virgin's intervention at this supreme moment, when Christ, like another Jupiter, brandishes his thunderbolt against mankind. Rubens was a man of his time ; his studies of Italian art in no way led him back to the Quattrocentisti nor the Raffae- leschi ; their power was at an end. The influence of Michelangelo, Titian, Tintoretto, more especially Baroccio, Polydoro, and even Parmigiano, is no less visible with him than with those masters who, like Spranger, Chr. Schwartz, and Goltzius, stood high in public estimation immediately before his advent. In the midst of the rarest activity as a painter, Rubens was now called upon to give proofs of a very different kind of ability. The truce concluded between Spain and the Netherlands in 1609 ended in 1621 ; archduke Albert died the same year. His widow sincerely wished to prolong the arrangement, still hoping to see the United Provinces return to the Spanish dominion, and in her eyes Rubens was the fittest person to bring about this conclusion. The painter's comings and goings, however, did not remain unheeded, for the French ambassador writes from Brussels in 1624, "Rubens is here to take the likeness of the prince of Poland, by order of the infanta. I am persuaded he will succeed better in this than in his negotiations for the truce." But, if Rubens was to fail in his efforts to bring about an arrangement with the Netherlands, other events enabled him to render great service to the state. Rubens and Buckingham met in Paris in 1625; a corre- spondence of some importance had been going on between the painter and the Brussels court, and before long it was proposed that he should endeavour to bring about a final arrangement between the crowns of England and Spain. The infanta willingly consented, and King Philip, who much objected to the interference of an artist, gave way on hearing, through his aunt, that the negotiator on the English side, B. Gerbier a Fleming by birth was like- wise a painter. Rubens and Gerbier very soon met in Holland. " Rubens is come hither to Holland, where he now is, and Gerbier in his company, walking from town to town, upon their pretence of pictures," writes Sir Dudley Carleton to Lord Con way in July 1627, "which may serve him for a few days if he dispatch and be gone ; but yf he entertayne tyme here long, he will infallibly be layd hold of, or sent with disgrace out of the country .... This I have made known to Rubens least he should meet with a skorne what may in some sort reflect upon others." Matters, however, went on very well, and Rubens volunteered to go to Spain and lay before the council the result of his negotiations (1628). Nine months were thus spent at Madrid ; they rank among the most important in Rubens's career. He had brought with htm eight pictures of various sizes and subjects as presents from the infanta, and he was also commissioned to take several portraits of the king and royal family. An equestrian picture of Philip IV., destroyed by fire in last century, became the subject of a poem by Lope de Vega, and the description enables us to identify the composition with that of a painting now in the Palazzo Pitti, ascribed to Velazquez. Through a letter to Peiresc we hear of the familiar intercourse kept up between the painter and the king. Philip delighted to see Rubens at work in the studio pre- pared for him in the palace, where he not only left many original pictures, but copied for his own pleasure and pro- fit the best of Titian's. No less than forty works were thus produced, and, says the author of the Annals of the Artists of Spain, "the unwearied activity of his well-stored mind is exemplified by the fact that amid his many occupations he was seeking in the libraries materials for an edition of Marcus Aurelius, on which his friend Gaspard Gevaerts was then engaged." An artistic event of some importance connected with the sojourn in Spain is the meeting of Rubens and Velazquez, to the delight, and we venture to add, advantage of both. Great as was the king's admiration of Rubens as a painter, it seems to have been scarcely above the value attached to his political services. Far from looking upon Rubens as a man of inferior calling, unworthy to meddle with matters of state, he now commissioned the painter to go to London as bearer of his views to Charles I. Giving up his long cherished hope of revisiting Italy on his return from Spain, Rubens, honoured with the title of secretary of the king's privy council in the Netherlands, started at once on his new mission. Although he stopped but four days in Antwerp, he arrived in London just as peace had been concluded with France. In this conjunc- ture of affairs, it can hardly be doubted that the eminent position of Rubens as a painter greatly contributed to his ultimate success as an envoy. Received by Charles with genuine pleasure, he very soon was able to ingratiate himself so far as to induce the king to pledge his royal word to take part in no undertakings against Spain so long as the negotiations remained unconcluded, and all the subsequent endeavours of France, Venice, and the States found him immovable in this resolution. Although the privy council in Madrid, as well they might, passed several votes of thanks to Rubens, the tardiness of the Spanish court in sending a regular ambassador involved the unfortunate painter in distressing anxieties, and the tone of his dispatches is very bitter. But he speaks with the greatest admiration of England and the English, regretting that he should only have come to know the country so late. His popularity must have been very great, for on September 23, 1629, the university of Cam- bridge conferred upon him the honorary degree of master of arts, and on February 21, 1630, he was knighted, the king presenting him with the sword used at the ceremony, which is still preserved by the descendants of the artist. When the council at Madrid had to deliberate as to recognition of the title conferred upon Rubens in England, they remembered that Titian had been made a knight by the emperor Charles V., and the matter was settled without difficulty; but, the painter's name having been mentioned as a possible envoy to the British court, Olivares objected that it was quite out of the question to make an ambas- sador of one who lived by the work of his hands. Although, it seems, less actively employed as an artist in England than in Spain, Rubens, besides his sketches for the decoration of the Banqueting House at Whitehall, painted the admirable picture of the Blessings of Peace, now in the National Gallery. There is no reason to doubt, with Smith, that " His Majesty sat to him for his portrait, yet it is not a little remarkable that no notice occurs in any of the royal catalogues, or the writers of the