Rubens has made sure that we shall have only a feeling of pity as we look upon it—partly by depicting in the living figures reverence and tenderness in which we instantly share, and partly by the beauty of the composition.
Let us study the picture’s composition: first, in its arrangement of line; secondly, in its arrangement of light and shade, though the two are really blended. Every figure in the composition has either the beauty of grace or that of character; and the most beautiful is the Saviour’s, which has the elongated, pliant grace of the stem and tendrils of a vine. And the drooping flower upon it is the head, to which all the principal lines of the composition lead. Start where you will, and follow along the direction of the figures, and your eye finally rests upon the head. It is the focus-point. And note that on the edges of the group the lines begin by being firm and strong in character, gradually increasing In suppleness and grace as they draw near the sacred figure, until finally all the dignity and sweetness of the picture come to an intensity in the head. Lest the central figure should be lacking in impressiveness as a mass, its effect has been broadened by the winding-sheet, against the opaque white of which its own whiteness of flesh is limpid and ashy in tone. Apart from the flesh-tints, the other hues in the picture are black, very dark green, and very dull red. Thus by its color as well as by the lines the figure of the Saviour is made the most prominent spot in the composition. Moreover, placed as it is upon the most brilliantly lighted part of the picture, its own tender lighting is made more emphatic. We might say that a beautiful and solemn melody is represented by the lighter portions of the composition, while the dark supply a weighty and magnificent accompaniment.
In this distribution of light, as well as in the arrangement of the lines, there has been a careful building up of effect; everything is calculated to arouse the emotion and make at once a noble spectacle and a profound impression. Painted as an altarpiece to be viewed from a distance, it is an example of the “grand style,” represented most often in Italian art.
Compared with it, “The Maids of Honor” may appear to have little grandeur. This Rubens picture presents a beautiful pattern of decoration, while in the Velasquez picture more than half the canvas is given up to empty space; the figures in the Rubens have a grand flow of line, those in the Velasquez seem stiff and awkwardly grouped; the first excites our emotion, the second our curiosity.
Before studying closely this painting of “The Maids of Honor,” we must recall the fact that in 1628 Rubens visited the court of Spain for nine months; that Velasquez watched him paint and came under the fascination of his personality; that he saw Rubens’s admiration for the great Italian pictures which hung in the king’s gallery; that by the advice of Rubens he shortly afterward visited Italy and studied in Venice, Milan, and Rome. In fact, Velasquez was well acquainted with the grandeur of Italian painting; and in the middle period of his life, between 1645 and 1648, he executed a grand example of decorative painting—his famous “Surrender of Breda.” It is a noble decoration, and at the same time one of the finest historical paintings in the world.
So it was not because he did not know what other great painters had done, or of what he himself could do to rival them on their own ground,—for the “Surrender of Breda” could hang, without loss of dignity, beside a Titian,—that he turned his back upon the Italian grand style, and in the years of his maturity produced “The Maids of Honor,” a new kind of picture. It was new because it was the product of a new kind of artist’s eyesight, of a new conception of realism.
We have seen in Hans Holbein’s “Portrait of Georg Gyze,” in the January number, an