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Rubens
by
He was now aged thirty-two, in possession of an income from the State, and a fame and name to be envied. He was rich in money, jewels and art treasures brought from Italy, for he had the thrifty instincts of a true Dutchman.
And it was a gala day for all Antwerp when the bells rang and the great organ in the Cathedral played the wedding-march when Peter Paul Rubens and Isabella Brandt were married, on the Thirteenth of October, Sixteen Hundred Nine. Never was there a happier mating.
That fine picture at Munich of Rubens and his wife tells of the sweet comradeship that was to be theirs for many years. He opened a school, and pupils flocked to him from all Europe; commissions for work came and orders for altar-pieces from various churches.
An order was issued by the Archduke that he should not leave Holland, and a copy of the order was sent to the Duke of Mantua, to shut off his importunities.
Among the pupils of Rubens we find the name of Jordaens (whom he had first known in Italy), De Crayer, Anthony Van Dyck, Franz Snyder and many others who achieved distinction. Rubens was a positive leader; so animated was his manner that his ambition was infectious. All his young men painted just as he did. His will was theirs. From now on, out of the thousands of pictures signed “P. P. Rubens,” we can not pick out a single picture and say, “Rubens did this.” He drew outlines and added the finishing touches; and surely would not have signed a canvas of which he did not approve. In his great studio at Antwerp, at various times, fully a hundred men worked to produce the pictures we call “Rubens.”
Those glowing canvases in the “Rubens Gallery” of the Louvre, showing the history and apotheosis of Marie de Medici, were painted at Antwerp. The joyous, exuberant touch of Rubens is over all, even though the work was done by ‘prentice hands.
Peaceful lives make dull biographies, and in prosperity is small romance.
We may search long before finding a life so full to overflowing of material good things as that of Rubens. All he touched turned to gold. From the time he returned to Antwerp in Sixteen Hundred Eight to his death in Sixteen Hundred Forty, his life-journey was one grand triumphal march. His many diplomatic missions were simply repetitions of his first Spanish embassy, with the Don John incident left out, for Don John seems to have been the only man who was not at home to the gracious Rubens.
Mr. Ruskin has said: “Rubens was a great painter, but he lacked that last undefinable something which makes heart speak to heart. You admire, but you never adore. No real sorrow ever entered his life.”
Perhaps we get a valuable clue in that last line. Great art is born of feeling, and the heart of Rubens was never touched by tragedy, nor the rocky fastnesses of his tears broken in upon by grief. In many ways his was the spirit of a child: he had troubles, but not sufficient to prevent refreshing sleep, and when he awoke in the morning the trials of yesterday were gone.
Even when the helpful, faithful and loving Isabella Brandt was taken away from him by death, there soon came other joys to take the place of those that were lost.
We have full fifty pictures of his second wife: she looks down at us–smiling, buxom, content–from every gallery-wall in Europe. Rubens was fifty-three and she was sixteen when they were married; and were it not for a twinge of gout now and then, he would have been as young as she.
When Rubens went to England on “an artistic commission,” we see that he captured Charles the First just as he captured the court of Spain. He painted five portraits of the King that we can trace. The mild-mannered Charles was greatly pleased with the fine portrait of himself bestriding the prancing cream-colored charger.