Part 12

The period of the great struggle of the Netherlands for religious and political independence from the yoke of Spain and the Inquisition was not propitious for the fostering of the Fine Arts. Not only did the troubled provinces, as was quite natural, slacken in artistic production, but a vast portion of the treasures owned by churches and monastic establishments were destroyed by the fanaticism of Protestant iconoclasts. The separation of the Protestant North from the Catholic South by the Utrecht Union in 1579 became in a way the determining factor for the future course of painting in Holland and in the Belgic provinces. The Dutchmen practically had no further use for religious painting, and devoted themselves more exclusively to the domestic genre, portraiture, and landscape; whilst the Flemings applied themselves largely to infusing new vitality into the representation of Scriptural characters and incidents which, through constant mechanical repetition, had become mere allegorical hieroglyphics, or generalised ideas without the all-important sense of pulsating life. This regeneration was the great deed of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), who, whilst still benefiting from the example of the great Italians, remained the very embodiment of Flemish character and thought, and became the founder of the second important period of Flemish national art. He was a man of exuberant vitality and boundless energy, endowed with a creative force unequalled in the whole history of art. He must rank for all time among the very giants of the brush, with Rembrandt, Titian, and Velazquez, his contribution to the progress in pictorial art being the use of pigment and sweeping brushwork as a constructive element—an advance as significant as the Venetians’ admission of light into the pictorial scheme, which with the Florentines was based entirely on linear design.

PIETER BRUEGHEL

But before considering the magnificent array of close on fifty authentic works by the master which form part of the French national collection, reference will have to be made to a few Flemish artists of the singularly barren decades that precede the advent of Rubens. First and foremost among these is Pieter Brueghel (or Breughel) the Elder (1530-1569), who was born at Breda in 1530, became a pupil of Pieter Koeck, and died at Brussels in 1569. In spite of his early travels in Italy—which were then already considered indispensable for the completion of an artist’s training—he remained unaffected by the all-pervading Italian influence. He was pure Flemish in thought and expression, and devoted himself to the realistic painting of peasant life. Certain realistic features which make his pictures sometimes appear obscene and coarse to modern eyes are merely an expression of the humour of his age. The exquisite little painting, _The Beggars_ (No. 1917), which is fully signed

PETER BRUEGHEL, M D L VIII,

is probably some satirical political allusion to the revolutionary party who called themselves the _Gueux_ (beggars). A similar political significance is probably the intention of _The Parable of the Blind_ (No. 1917A). The single file of blind men following their blind leaders into a river is meant to satirise the moral blindness of the artist’s compatriots following their political leaders into disaster. This excellent version of Brueghel’s famous masterpiece at Naples was bought at the Leys sale at Antwerp, in 1894, for £724. The type of picture to which the elder Brueghel owes his sobriquet “Peasant Brueghel” is exemplified at the Louvre by two little panels, _A Village_ (No. 1918) and _Peasants Dancing_ (No. 1918A), which can, however, only be accepted as school pictures.

JAN BRUEGHEL

Of Brueghel’s two sons, Pieter the younger, known as “Hell” Brueghel, is not represented at the Louvre, which, on the other hand, boasts possession of eight examples from the brush of “Peasant” Brueghel’s second son, Jan (1568-1625), known to fame as “Velvet” Brueghel, either owing to his love of splendid apparel or to the velvety softness of his brush. He began as a still-life and flower painter, in which capacity he often collaborated with Rubens. Having journeyed to Rome in 1593, he devoted himself more exclusively to landscape enlivened with many small figures, for which some Scriptural or mythological subject generally provided the excuse. Where his pictures contain figures on a larger scale, they are generally put in by Rubens, Rottenhammer, or Van Balen. The last-named is certainly responsible for the figures in _Air_ (No. 1920), one of a series of the Four Elements, painted by Jan Brueghel for his Roman patron, Cardinal Federigo Borromeo, in 1621. To the same series belongs _Earth_, or _The Earthly Paradise_ (No. 1919), a subject often repeated by him, as for instance in the versions at The Hague and at Budapest. Of his other pictures at the Louvre _The Bridge of Talavera_ (No. 1925), and the _Landscape_ (No. 1926), are signed and dated BRUEGHEL, 1619, and J. BRUEGHEL, 1620, respectively. _The Battle of Arbela_ (No. 1921) is a characteristic work with many minutely wrought figures. The _Landscapes_ (Nos. 1923 and 1924) are of doubtful authenticity, and were formerly attributed to Paul Bril. They are not now exhibited.

There are scarcely any Flemish characteristics in the art of Paul Bril (1556-1626), the younger brother and pupil of Matthias Bril. He was born at Antwerp, but worked nearly all his life in Rome. There is little to distinguish this precursor of Poussin in the art of landscape from his Italian contemporaries. In _Duck Shooting_ (No. 1908), _Diana and her Nymphs_ (No. 1909), and _Pan and Syrinx_ (No. 1911) the figures are believed to have been painted in by Annibale Carracci. _The Fishermen_ (No. 1910) bears his signature PA. BRILLI, and the date 1624.

THE FRANCK FAMILY

Although the Louvre owns no picture by Frans Floris, the head of the Italianising mid-sixteenth-century Antwerp school, his uninteresting style may be studied in _The Story of Esther_ (No. 1989) by his pupil Frans Franck (1542-1616). To that second-rate artist’s son, Frans Franck the Younger (1581-1642), who already benefited to a certain extent by the example of Rubens, is given in the official Catalogue _Ulysses recognising Achilles among the Daughters of Lycomedes_ (No. 1991A). _The Parable of the Prodigal Son_ (No. 1990), which is also catalogued under his name, is obviously by his son Frans Franck III., since the date 1663 precedes the signature, and F. Franck the younger died in 1642.

Frans Pourbus the Younger (1569-1622) was born at Antwerp, but spent the later part of his life in Paris, where, like his father, he enjoyed considerable reputation as a portrait painter. He had previously been working at the Mantuan Court, and became painter to Marie de Médicis after 1609. Although he occasionally produced altarpieces like the rather uninspired _Last Supper_ (No. 2068) and _St. Francis receiving the Stigmata_ (No. 2069), he was essentially a portrait painter. In this capacity he belongs rather to the age that was coming to a close than to the new era initiated by Rubens. His portraits are quite soundly painted, rich in colour, and convincing as likenesses, but lack depth of character and suavity of touch. By far his best pictures at the Louvre are the _Portrait of Henri IV._ (No. 2071) and the large _Portrait of Marie de Médicis_ (No. 2072), in which the details of the costume are particularly noteworthy. Less important is another _Portrait of Henri IV._ (No. 2070), and one of _Guillaume du Vair_ (No. 2074).

Octavius van Veen, or Otto Venius (1558-1629), the painter of _The Artist and his Family_ (No. 2191), owes his fame more to the fact that he was one of the three masters under whom Rubens studied than to any intrinsic merit of his art.

PETER PAUL RUBENS

The Louvre owes its almost unequalled wealth in paintings by Rubens to the master’s relations with Marie de Médicis and her Court; and to this reason is due the fact that by far the largest portion of the fifty-one authentic works wholly or partly from his brush, which now form part of this great collection, date approximately from, or immediately before and after, the time during which he was busy with the famous series painted by order of that queen for the decoration of the Luxembourg Palace, and now to be seen in a setting appropriate to their florid sumptuousness in the new Rubens Gallery at the Louvre. Even so, the collection comprises examples of every phase of the master’s colossal activity—religious and historical compositions, allegorical paintings, landscapes, portraits, still life, and even _genre_-pieces, like the _Kermesse_ (No. 2115), in which he successfully competes with Teniers on a ground peculiarly his own.

Born at Siegen in 1577, Rubens received his artistic education at Antwerp from Tobias Verhaecht, a landscape painter, Adam van Noort, and O. van Veen. At the age of twenty-three he went to Italy and entered the service of Vincenzo Gonzaga of Mantua, studying in their own country the works of the great Italian masters, and especially the Venetians, from whose glorious colour he derived more benefit than from his early training. With the exception of a journey to the Court of Philip III. at Madrid, where he was sent on a mission by the Duke of Mantua in 1603, Rubens spent the eight years from 1600 to 1608 in the various Italian centres, and especially in Rome, where he painted, about 1606, the little _Landscape with Ruins_ (No. 2119), which is of interest not only as showing to what degree he was at that time influenced by the Roman school, and by the Carracci, but also as being the very first landscape known to have been produced by him. The same view of the Palatine Hill is to be recognised in the background of the _Four Philosophers_ at the Pitti Palace, and in the portrait of Woverius in the Arenberg collection. Of about the same time, though the figures would appear to have been added at a considerably later date, is the _Landscape with a Rainbow_ (No. 2118).

RUBENS AT ANTWERP

Having returned to Antwerp in 1608, and married his first wife, Isabella Brant, in the following year, Rubens, who was now made Court painter to Archduke Albrecht, entered upon a period of stupendous artistic activity, which extended to about 1621, when he began to divide his time between art and diplomatic missions, and, having previously organised a vast studio with an army of assistants, often left the execution of his brilliant sketch designs to less capable hands. This early Antwerp period is not particularly well represented at the Louvre, although the collection includes _The Virgin surrounded by the Holy Innocents_ (No. 2078)— a Virgin of characteristic Flemish coarseness and fulness of form, in the midst of a dense swarm of delicious, plump, dimpled, wingless angel-children, whose rosy baby-flesh is painted with inimitable mastery. The picture was painted about 1615, six years before _The Virgin and Child within a Garland of Flowers_ (No. 2079), executed in 1621 for Cardinal Federigo Borromeo. The tasteless floral wreath in this picture, as in the similar versions at Munich and New York, is from the brush of Jan Brueghel. To about the year 1615 belongs also the _Christ on the Cross, with the Virgin, the Magdalen and St. John_ (No. 2082), which can, however, hardly be entirely from the master’s own hand. The mass of unbroken vermilion in the robe of St. John is one of Rubens’s favourite devices at that period. _The Resurrection of Lazarus_ (No. 2081) is the original sketch for the Berlin picture.

In 1620, when Rubens undertook to paint a series of thirty-nine _Miracles of SS. Ignatius Loyola and François Xavier_ for the ceiling of the Jesuit Church at Antwerp, the business-like organisation of his studio was an acknowledged fact, as may be gathered from the terms of the agreement which stipulated that the master himself should provide the designs, though the execution was to be entrusted to his most competent assistants. The actual paintings were destroyed by fire in 1718, but of the original sketches seventeen have been preserved, and are now distributed between the Louvre, the Vienna Academy, the Museums of Gotha and Brussels, and the Dulwich Gallery. The four in the La Caze collection at the Louvre are _Abraham’s Sacrifice_ (No. 2120), _Abraham and Melchisedek_ (No. 2121), _The Elevation of the Cross_ (No. 2122), and _The Coronation of the Virgin_ (No. 2123). The whole series, but especially the first two of these, is remarkable for the boldness of the foreshortening, calculated for the position of the panels on the ceiling, and for the swift bravura and inimitable expressiveness of the brushwork. To the same period belongs _Philopœmen recognised by an Old Woman_ (No. 2124), which is essentially a brilliant still-life study for a lost picture.

THE MÉDICIS SERIES

We come now to the series of twenty-one large allegorical paintings, designed by Rubens and executed mostly by his pupils, from 1621 to 1625, for the decoration of the Luxembourg Palace for Marie de Médicis, whose by no means inspiring career had to furnish the subjects for the series. It was a thankless task which could only be accomplished by a _tour de force_—by removing the events of the queen’s life from actuality into the sphere of mythology and allegory. That the strange mingling of the real and the ideal should sometimes verge on the grotesque was almost inevitable—as inevitable as that the work of his assistants should have failed to do full justice to the master’s conception, even if it was “pulled together” by the easily recognisable touches added by Rubens to the finished panels. The florid exuberance of design and colour was entirely in keeping with the purpose and the surroundings for which the paintings were intended. It is impossible here to enter into a full description of this extensive series, or to define exactly Rubens’s share in each of the eleven pictures. We must confine ourselves to the brief enumeration of the subjects in the order in which they are now to be seen in the new Rubens Gallery. The series begins with _The Fates spinning the Destiny of Marie de Médicis_ (No. 2085). Then follow _The Triumph of Truth_ (No. 2105); _Henri IV. receiving the Portrait of Marie_ (No. 2088); _The Marriage of Marie by Procuration with Henri IV._ (No. 2089); _Marie landing at Marseilles, Nov. 3, 1600_ (No. 2090); _The Marriage at Lyons, Dec. 10, 1600_ (No. 2091); _The Birth of Louis XIII. at Fontainebleau, Sept. 27, 1601_ (No. 2092); _Henri IV. leaves for the War with Germany and entrusts the Government to the Queen_ (No. 2093, Plate XXI.); _The Coronation of the Queen_ (No. 2094); _Apotheosis of Henri IV. and the Queen’s Regency_ (No. 2095); _The Queen’s Journey to Ponts-de-Cé_ (No. 2097); _Exchange of the Two Princesses, Nov. 9, 1615_ (No. 2098); _The Prosperous Regency_ (No. 2099); _The Majority of Louis XIII._ (No. 2100); _The Queen’s Nocturnal Flight from Blois_ (No. 2101); _The Reconciliation of the Queen with her Son_ (No. 2102); _The Conclusion of Peace_ (No. 2103); and _Marie’s Interview with her Son_ (No. 2104). But _The Birth of Marie de Médicis, at Florence, on April 26, 1575_ (No. 2086); _The Education of Marie by Minerva, Mercury, Apollo, and the Graces_ (No. 2087); and _The Gods in Olympus protecting the Queen’s Government_ (No. 2096), which belong to the same series, have been placed in another room.

Of the first and the last paintings the Louvre owns the original sketch on one panel, by Rubens, for _The Triumph of Truth_ and _The Fates spinning the Destiny of Marie_ (No. 2110), the other preliminary sketches being at the Hermitage and the Munich Gallery. It is interesting to note that all these sketches are designed in a very light key, almost in grisaille, with touches of rose and other tender colour notes, so that apparently Rubens’s assistants were allowed great liberty in the matter of colour.

MÉDICIS PORTRAITS

Several other pictures by Rubens at the Louvre—all of them portraits—are more or less directly connected with the Médicis series, and were painted between 1621 and 1625. These are the _Portrait of Anne of Austria_ (No. 2112), which was formerly known as _Elizabeth of Bourbon_; the _Portrait of Francesco de’ Medici_ (No. 2106), Grand Duke of Tuscany, and father of Marie de Médicis, which was painted for the Luxembourg Gallery; the _Portrait of Johanna of Austria_ (No. 2107), daughter of the Emperor Ferdinand, and wife of Francesco de’ Medici; the _Portraits of Marie de Médicis_ (Nos. 2108 and 2109) (the former in the character of Bellona, and both studio works with the final touches added by the master); and the _Portrait of Baron Henri de Vicq_ (No. 2111), who, as Flemish Ambassador to the French Court, was instrumental in procuring Rubens the important commission for the Luxembourg pictures. This admirable portrait was bought at the King of Holland’s sale in 1850 for £637.

To the same period belongs the beautiful _Portrait of Susanne Fourment_ (Rubens’s handsome, large-eyed sister-in-law, whose features are best known from the _Chapeau de Paille_ at the National Gallery), which is still officially catalogued as _Portrait of a Lady of the Boonen Family_ (No. 2114); and the important composition _Lot’s Flight from Sodom_ (No. 2075), which bears the rare full signature and date

PE.-PA.-RUBENS FE, Aᵒ 1625,

to prove the master’s satisfaction with his own handiwork. It is a design of carefully studied rhythm, dramatic expressiveness, and subtly harmonised colour, carried out with the swift sureness of his later work.

In 1627, a year before his mission to Spain on behalf of the Infanta Isabella, widow of the Archduke Albrecht, Rubens designed for his patroness an important series of tapestries, which were, as was his wont at that period, sketched out by him, executed by his assistants, and touched up by his own hand. The tapestries were subsequently presented by the Infanta to a convent at Madrid; some of the paintings for them perished by fire, others were preserved at the Convent of Loeches, near Madrid. Two of these, _The Prophet Elijah in the Desert_ (No. 2076) and _The Triumph of Religion_ (No. 2083), were part of General Sebastiani’s loot from Spain, and were bought by the Louvre for £2400; whilst four others, now at Grosvenor House, were bought by the Marquis of Westminster for £10,500. Of about the same date is the brilliant _Adoration of the Magi_ (No. 2077), with its Titianesque scheme of strong red, blue, and golden yellow, of which a replica is in an Irish private collection.

LATE WORKS BY RUBENS

The closing decade of Rubens’s life is represented by five pictures of considerable importance. Of _Queen Tomyris with the Head of Cyrus_ (No. 2084) there is an earlier, large, and deservedly famous version in Lord Darnley’s collection; but the Louvre picture exceeds it in beauty of design and in unity of colour. It was painted about the same time (_cca._ 1632) as _Religion crowned by a Genius_ (No. 2126), one of the sketches for the ceiling at Whitehall. Of peculiar interest, owing to its unfinished state which reveals the master’s method of portraiture, is the superb portrait group of _Hélène Fourment, the Artist’s Second Wife, and Two of her Children_ (No. 2113, Plate XXII.). Only the heads, which are remarkable for an intensity of expression that is rarely to be found in Rubens’s paintings, are finished. All the rest is loosely and thinly sketched in sepia heightened with swift touches of brighter colour. It was painted about 1636, which is also the approximate date of _A Flemish Kermesse_ (No. 2115), an almost unique instance of the master applying the exuberant energy of his magic brush to a subject in which the expression of intense vitality and full-blooded sensuousness assumes the aspect almost of bestiality—which, however, in no way detracts from the artistic value of the painting. To turn from this to _A Joust by the Moat of a Castle_ (No. 2116) is to pass from coarse realism to pure romanticism, inspired probably by the associations of the picturesque Castle of Steen, which Rubens had bought in 1635, and which forms the setting for this scene of knightly prowess. This, and the marvellous and strangely modern little _Landscape_ (No. 2117), in which the morning sun is seen rising from the autumnal mist, belong to the closing years of Rubens’s life. He died at Antwerp on May 20, 1640.

ANTHONY VAN DYCK

Born at Antwerp in 1599, Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), after having worked a few years under Hendrick van Balen, entered Rubens’s studio in 1615, and soon became so conversant with the method of his famous master, that he was at an early age entrusted with the execution of important designs. Before he had reached his twentieth year he was a member of the Guild of St. Luke, and had acquired a reputation second only to that of Rubens himself. The _Portraits of Jean Grusset Richardot, President of the Netherlands Council, and his Son_ (No. 1985), which was bought in 1784 for 16,001 _livres_, so closely resembles the work of Rubens, especially in the brilliant flesh-painting, that the picture—a posthumous portrait, by the way—for a long time passed under the elder master’s name, although it is now admitted by the best authorities to be an early picture by Van Dyck.

Van Dyck paid a short visit to England in 1620. He went to Italy in the following year, studying the works of the great masters, and especially of Titian, and finally settling in Genoa, where he remained until his return to Antwerp in 1628. During these years he devoted himself almost exclusively to portraiture, in which he endeavoured successfully to emulate the golden warmth of colour which had drawn him towards Titian. Unfortunately this, to some the most attractive, phase of Van Dyck’s art is but indifferently shown at the Louvre, the only example being a _Portrait of a Man_ (No. 1976).

VAN DYCK’S SECOND ANTWERP PERIOD