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 entrusted 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 the 13th of May 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 al so
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.
Richelieu gave himself some trouble to get part of the work,
intended to represent the life of Henry IV., bestowed upon
Cavalier d’Arpina, but did not succeed in his endeavours. The
queen’s exile, however, prevented the undertaking from going
beyond a few sketches, and two or three panels, one of which,
the “Triumph of Henry IV.,” now in the Uffizi Gallery, is
one of the noblest works of Rubens or of any master.
On the 11th 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 magnificent engravings by Vorsterman, Pontius and others had conveyed singularly striking interpretations. “Whatever work of his I may require,” writes Moretus, the celebrated 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 brush, none, perhaps, will more thoroughly disclose to us Rubens’s comprehension of religious decorative art than the “Assumption of the Virgin” at the high altar of Antwerp cathedral, finished in 1625. It is, of twenty repetitions of this subject, the only example still preserved at the place for which it was intended. 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.
Although able to rely so greatly on his power as a colourist, Rubens is not a mere decorator. He penetrates into the 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. When St Francis attempts to shelter the universe from the Saviour’s wrath (Brussels Gallery), Rubens 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. Rubens was a man of his time; his studies of Italian art in no way led him back to the Quattrocentisti nor the Raffaeleschi; their power was at an end. The influence of Michelangelo, Titian, Tintoretto, more especially Baroccio, Polidoro, and even Parmigiano, is no less visible with him than with those masters who, like Spranger, C. 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 Albrecht 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 and 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 correspondence 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, Sir Balthasar Gerbier—a Fleming by birth—was likewise a painter. Rubens and Gerbier very soon met in Holland. Matters 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 him eight pictures of various sizes and subjects as presents from the infanta, and he was also commissioned to paint several portraits of the king and royal family. An equestrian picture of Philip IV., destroyed by tire 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 prepared for him in the palace, where he not only left many original pictures, but copied for his own pleasure and profit the best of Titian’s. An artistic event of some importance connected with the sojourn in Spain is the meeting of Rubens and Velazquez, to the delight, and, it may be added, 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. He now commissioned the painter to go to London as bearer of his views to Charles I., and 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. 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 the king immovable in this resolution. 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 the 23rd of September 1629 the university of Cambridge conferred upon him the honorary degree of master of arts, and on the 21st of February 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.
Although, it seems, less actively employed as an artist in England than in Spain, Rubens, besides his sketches for the decoration of the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall, painted the admirable picture of “The Blessings of Peace” now in the
