Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/480

 460 RUBENS came director of that of Vienna. He has exe- cuted many cartoons for churches and for the palace of Hohenschwangau. His most cele- brated oil painting is " Columbus at the Mo- ment of Discovering Land," now in Prague. IU BKVS, Peter Paul, a Flemish painter, born at Siegen, Germany, June 29, 1577, died in Antwerp, May 30, 1640. His father, John Rubens, was the secretary of William the Silent, who on discovering his intimacy with his wife imprisoned him in a citadel, and next banished him to Siegen, whence he was per- mitted to remove in 1578 to Cologne, where he died in 1587. In 1588 Rubens went with his mother (Maria Pypelincx) to Antwerp, where he became page of Marguerite de Ligne, count- ess de Lalaing, but soon left her to study art, chiefly under A. van Noort and O. van Veen or Venius, by whose advice he went in 1600 to Italy, furnished with letters of recommenda- tion from the archduke Albert, then viceroy of the Netherlands, and his consort, the infan- ta Isabella. He was generally accomplished, handsome, and dignified. Making Venice his first halting place, "he compounded," says Fuseli, "from the splendor of Paul Veronese and the glow of Tintoretto that florid system of mannered magnificence which is the element of his art and the principle of his school." Vincenzo di Gonzaga, the duke of Mantua, at- tached him to his court, sent him on a diplo- matic mission to Spain, and enabled him to re- side in Rome. Subsequently he visited Milan and Genoa, where he made a collection of drawings of the chief edifices (published in 2 vols. fol. in 1622). The serious illness of his mother in 1608 hurried him back to Antwerp, and there he was appointed court painter by the archduke. In 1609 he married Isabella Brandt, a sister-in-law of his brother Philip, and for many years was prosperously engaged in his profession. His pictures painted at this period are considered, both in composition and finish, his most pleasing productions ; and not- withstanding the rapidly increasing demand for them, it is probable that the greater part were executed wholly by himself. In his later works he was aided by pupils. He lived in an elegant mansion built by himself and stored with works of art, and his prestige as courtier and artist drew around him pupils from all parts of Europe. In 1620 he was commis- sioned by Maria de' Medici to decorate the gal- lery of the Luxembourg palace with allegorical compositions illustrating the principal events in her career. The pictures, 21 in number, were in great part executed by his most emi- nent pupils from sketches prepared by him, which are now in the Pinakothek in Munich. While in Paris, superintending the details of this commission, Rubens made the acquaint- ance of the duke of Buckingham, who bought his entire collection of works of art for 100,000 florins. In 1626 he was for a time rendered in- consolable by the death of his wife, whose por- trait he frequently introduced into his works. In the following year he was sent by the in- fanta Isabella to the Hague to negotiate with Sir Bulthasar Gerbier, the agent of Charles I. of England; and in the autumn of 1628 he re- visited Spain. Philip IV. appointed him secre- tary to the privy council, an office subsequently granted in reversion to his eldest son, Albert. Scarcely had he returned to Flanders in the spring of 1629, when he was sent as envoy to England. During his residence there, which terminated in February, 1630, he painted his allegory of "Peace and War," now in the British national gallery, with other works, and was knighted. Returning to Antwerp, he married in December, 1630, Helena Forman or Fourment, a girl of 16. So numerous at this time were his commissions from crowned heads alone, that he had time for little more than designing and applying the finishing touches to the pictures which pass under his name, leaving the body of the work to be done by assistants. In this manner were executed the series of pictures representing the apothe- osis of James I. for the ceiling of the banquet- ing house of Whitehall, which he completed in 1635, receiving for them 3,000. In 1633 he was sent on another embassy to Holland, which was interrupted by the death of the in- fanta. This was his last public service, and a few years later he became in a great mea- sure incapacitated for work by the gout, which finally caused his death. His posthumous col- lection of works of art, including 319 pictures, is said to have produced 25,000. The pic- tures ascribed in whole or in part to Rubens amount, according to Smith's catalogue rai- tonne, to 1,800, or, estimating the number of years he was actually engaged in the practice of his art, to nearly one a week. They com- prise history, portraits, landscapes, animals, and fruit and flower pieces, and are widely dispersed over Europe, the collection in the Louvre being particularly rich. The finest are still in Antwerp, in the cathedral of which city are his well known "Descent from the Cross " and " Elevation of the Cross," the former being generally considered his master- piece. In the academy at Antwerp are many of the pictures executed by Rubens in his ear- liest and best period, but some of those for- merly in the churches have been removed to other collections. The Belvedere in Vienna contains a noble altarpiece, with wings, repre- senting the " Virgin presenting a splendid Robe to St. Ildefonso ;" " St. Ambrose refu- sing to admit the Emperor Theodosius into the Church ;" and two altarpieces representing the miracles performed by St. Ignatius Loyola and St. Francis Xavier. In the Pinakothek at Munich, which contains nearly 100 of his works, are two which especially illustrate the surprising energy which he infused into his delineations of human actions, the "Battle of the Amazons" and the small picture of the "Fall of tho Damned." Scarcely less powerful, though in a different degree, is the