Part 13

The Virgin in a blue robe and red mantle is seated on a canopied throne, behind which is an embroidered hanging. Her eyes are looking downward upon a missal which she holds in her left hand. On her right knee, and supported by her right arm, is seated the Holy Child, who reaches out for an apple, offered to Him by a kneeling Angel. This Angel holds in his left hand a viol and bow. At the right, another kneeling Angel is playing a harp. The scene is framed in a Gothic arch, flanked on either side by a circular column, each column supporting a single male figure in a sculptured niche: on the right, St. Simon the Apostle is holding a saw, and on the left, the Prophet David is holding a harp. On each spandrel of the arch a cherub is holding a globe. Beyond this again, on either side of the throne, we see a landscape with a castle on the left and a church and river on the right. In the foreground there is a tessellated floor covered with an Oriental rug.

This idea of angels playing instruments[21] Memling may have learned from Italy.

[Illustration:

_Collection of the Hon. Andrew W. Mellon_

MADONNA AND CHILD WITH ANGELS

--_Hans Memling_]

Hans Memling (or Memlinc), was born in 1430 or 1435, supposedly in Memelynck (whence his name) near Alkmaar in Holland. Tradition says that his family removed to the diocese of Mainz when he was fifteen. Memling seems to have painted in Cologne before he went to Bruges about 1465, where it is thought he was a pupil of Roger van der Weyden. It is certain that he was a master painter in Bruges in 1467. In 1479 he painted his masterpiece, _The Marriage of St. Catherine_, ordered by Jan Floreins for the St. John’s Hospital, Bruges, and also a smaller triptych, _The Adoration of the Magi_, for the same building. Another great work was the _Shrine of St. Ursula_, ordered by the Hospital in 1480 to enclose some relics of St. Ursula brought from the Holy Land,--a miniature Gothic chapel adorned with finials, statuettes, and medallions representing episodes in the life of St. Ursula. Memling died in 1494 in Bruges, which contains to-day a great number of his works.

Memling, in common with the Van Eycks and Roger van der Weyden was fond of enamelling his grassy swards, where the people sit or walk, with beautifully painted flowers; such as the daisy, the anemone, and the iris. Hans Memling is the most attractive of all the painters of the Netherlandish School, the most human, the most poetic, most graceful and the tenderest, merging, as did Fra Angelico (1387–1455), his contemporary, from Mediæval to Renaissance. Indeed Hans Memling is often called the “Flemish Fra Angelico.”

PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG GENTLEMAN.

_Hans Memling (1430–1494)._

_Collection of Mrs. John N. Willys._

Here we have the portrait of a young gentleman nearly full face, and clad in a black doublet which is open at the neck showing a white linen shirt with a narrow black circular band around the top. On his head is a circular black felt cap with narrow brim. The dense masses of his brownish red hair fall over his shoulders and completely cover his forehead to the top of his eyebrows. He has blue eyes and an intensely thoughtful and serious expression, and he holds in his left hand a scroll of paper, which might seem to indicate that he is a poet. The background consists of a woody landscape, and on the left is a river with two swans.

[Illustration:

_Collection of Mrs. John N. Willys_

PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG GENTLEMAN

--_Hans Memling_]

Dr. Max J. Friedländer, of Berlin, after examining the picture wrote to the present owner: “I was greatly interested in the Memling portrait from the Taylor Collection which I saw at your place. It is positively a characteristic work of the hand of the Master.”

This picture painted on panel (13½ × 9 inches) came from the John Edward Taylor Collection, London, in 1912.

LOUIS XIII KING OF FRANCE.

_Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640)._

_Collection of Sir Joseph Duveen, Bart._

This interesting oil painting on canvas (46½ × 38 inches) came from the Collection of the Emperor of Germany, Palace of Charlottenburg near Berlin, and was originally in the Collection of the Archduke Leopold William of Austria at the Ducal Palace, Brussels. It was painted between 1622 and 1625, and is supposed to be a companion to the portrait of _Anne of Austria_ (now in the Prado).

Louis XIII is represented about the age of twenty-five, life-size, and three-quarter length, looking at the observer from a background of sky, portico, and red drapery. He has a slight moustache and his hair is curled and falls down to the fine lace ruff around his neck. He is dressed in a polished steel suit of armor and rests his left hand, wearing a gauntlet, on a table covered by a cloth. A marshal’s _bâton_ is in his right hand. The Cross of the Order of the Holy Spirit hangs from a ribbon at his right side and on his left hangs a sword from a belt. Over his shoulder is thrown a bright blue velvet and ermine mantle embroidered with _fleur-de-lys_ and on the table is seen his helmet surmounted by rich plumes of ostrich feathers.

[Illustration:

_Collection of Sir Joseph Duveen, Bart._

LOUIS XIII, KING OF FRANCE

--_Peter Paul Rubens_]

Louis XIII, son of Henri IV and his second wife, Marie de’ Medici, was born in 1601 and became king at the age of nine, on his father’s assassination in 1610. Marie de’ Medici, then becoming Regent, determined to bring France into close relation with the House of Austria and Spain, and, consequently, brought about the marriage of her son in 1615 with Anne of Austria, daughter of the Spanish King, Philip III.

Louis does not seem to have inherited any of the talents of the Medici family, nor any of the dashing charm of his father, the gallant “King Henry of Navarre.” He acquiesced for a time in his mother’s government and in the rule of her favorites, among whom the Marshall d’Ancre was notable; but in 1617 he had the latter assassinated with the help of Charles d’Albert, Sieur de Luynes. This caused a breach between him and his mother and their relations continued hostile until death.

In 1624 Cardinal Richelieu, who had been Marie de’ Medici’s chief adviser, entered into the King’s council, and, thereafter, Richelieu directed the policy of France and controlled Louis XIII. Many conflicts resulted between the Protestants and the nobles of France; and Louis was made the enemy of his mother, Gaston d’Orléans (his brother) and, frequently, of his wife, Anne of Austria. On one occasion the Queen Mother and Gaston d’Orléans gained influence over Louis and he was about to dismiss Richelieu; but the Cardinal regained his power and immediately punished his enemies. The Queen Mother was forced to flee to Brussels and Gaston d’Orléans to Lorraine. Towards the end of his reign Louis is quoted as having said to Richelieu: “We have lived together too long to be separated.”

Cardinal Richelieu died in December, 1642, and Louis died a few months later, in May, 1643.

Peter Paul Rubens was born in Siegen, Westphalia, in 1577, and received his first education in the Jesuit College in Antwerp, and, for a few years, thereafter, was page to a noble lady. At the age of thirteen he began to study painting under Tobias Verhaagt, whom he left to study under Adam van Noort. Next he worked under Otto van Veen. In 1600 he went to Italy, entering the service of Vincenzo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, with whom he remained for eight years, interrupted by missions to various courts. In 1603 he visited Madrid and went to Venice, Rome, and Genoa. In 1609, on the death of the Duke of Mantua, Rubens returned to Antwerp and became Court-Painter to Albert and Isabella, Regents of the Netherlands. In that year also Rubens married Isabella Brandt. His studio at Antwerp now became famous and attracted students from every town in Europe.

He had barely established himself when he wrote to a friend in 1611: “On every side I am overwhelmed with solicitations. Without the least exaggeration, I may assure you that I have already had to refuse more than a hundred pupils.”

In 1621 Rubens was called by Marie de’ Medici to Paris to decorate the gallery in the Palace of the Luxembourg. At this period the _style Rubens_, which he introduced on his return from Italy and which was inspired by the late Italian Renaissance, was all the rage.

In 1622 he published a book on the _Palaces of Genoa_; and from the preface we learn that he was perfectly delighted to see the “old style known as barbarous, or Gothic, go out of fashion, to the great honor of the country, and disappear from Flanders, giving place to symmetrical buildings designed by men of better taste and conforming to the rules of the Greek and Roman antique.”

Rubens was a favorite with several kings and when he was neither painting nor teaching, he was visiting some foreign court on an embassy. On one of these visits to London in 1629–30 he was knighted by Charles I.

In 1630 he married again (Isabella Brandt having died in 1626), uniting himself to his first wife’s niece, Helena Fourment, who was but sixteen. Rubens now built a palatial house in Antwerp, where, as well as in his _Château de Steen_ in the vicinity, he lived a happy, industrious, and splendid life, having everything the world could give in the way of honors and joys. Rubens’s influence upon the artists of his own time was very great and he dominated the entire art taste of Europe during the first three quarters of the Seventeenth Century.

Religious subjects, mythological subjects, landscapes, hunting scenes, portraits, and still-life,--everything came easily to his brush. Sir Joshua Reynolds wrote a fine analysis of Rubens, in which he says: “The striking brilliancy of his colors, and their lively opposition to each other, the flowing liberty and freedom of his outline, the animated pencil with which every object is touched, all contribute to awaken and keep alive the attention of the spectator; awaken in him, in some measure, correspondent sensations, and make him feel a degree of that enthusiasm with which the painter was carried away. To this we may add the complete uniformity in all the parts of the work, so that the whole seems to be conducted and grow out of one mind: everything is of a piece and fits its place.

“Besides the excellency of Rubens in these general powers, he possessed the true art of imitating. He saw the objects of nature with a painter’s eye; he saw at once the predominant feature by which every object is known and distinguished; and as soon as seen, it was executed with a facility that is astonishing. Rubens was, perhaps, the greatest master in the mechanical part of the art, the best workman with his tools, that ever exercised a pencil.

“This power which Rubens possessed in the highest degree enabled him to represent whatever he undertook better than any other painter. His animals, particularly lions and horses, are so admirable that it may be said they were never properly represented but by him. His portraits rank with the best works of the painters who have made that branch of art the sole business of their lives; and of those he has left a great variety of specimens. The same may be said of his landscapes.

“The difference of the manner of Rubens from that of any other painter before him is in nothing more distinguishable than in his coloring, which is totally different from that of Titian, Correggio, or any of the great colorists. The effect of his pictures may be not improperly compared to clusters of flowers; all his colors appear as clear and as beautiful; at the same time he has avoided that tawdry effect which one would expect such gay colors to produce; in this respect resembling Barocci more than any other painter. What was said of an ancient painter may be applied to those two artists, that their figures look as if they fed upon roses.”

RINALDO AND ARMIDA.

_Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641)._

_Collection of Mr. Jacob Epstein._

This picture, oils on canvas (90 × 96 inches), came from the Collection of the Duke of Newcastle, Clumber Park, Nottinghamshire, to its present home in Baltimore.

Rinaldo is in shining, silver-blue armor with a flowing mantle of golden yellow, which is clasped at the shoulder. Armida wears a blue robe and a red mantle. The sky is blue with white clouds and there is a tree in the background and an enchanted lake at the right.

The influence of Van Dyck’s master, Rubens, is very apparent in this gorgeous picture, where all the delights of the Garden of Armida are set forth--that magic garden that Tasso described in his _Jerusalem Delivered_, to which many a Crusader was lured.

[Illustration:

_Collection of Mr. Jacob Epstein_

RINALDO AND ARMIDA

--_Sir Anthony Van Dyck_]

Another _Rinaldo and Armida_ by Van Dyck is in the Louvre.

Armida was a beautiful sorceress; and it was difficult to resist her enchantment. Two messengers were sent from the Christian Army with a talisman to effect Rinaldo’s escape. Armida followed Rinaldo and, not being able to regain her power over him, rushed into the combat and was killed. Rinaldo came of the noble Este family and ran away at the age of fifteen to join the Crusaders. He was enrolled in the “Adventurers Squadron” and is often called the “Achilles of the Christian Army.”

Anthony, or Antoon, van Dyck, was born at Antwerp in 1599, son of a silk-merchant. At the age of ten he became the pupil of Henrik van Balen and entered Rubens’s studio as assistant in 1618, when only seventeen. He soon achieved a reputation for his portraits and visited England. In 1621, by Rubens’s advice, he went to Italy, having already acquired a reputation. After a five years’ stay, much of which time was spent in Genoa, Van Dyck returned home and painted his celebrated picture of the _Crucifixion_ for the Church of St. Michael in Ghent, which established his reputation. In 1630 he again visited England; but, not meeting with the reception he had anticipated, he returned to Antwerp. However, in 1632, Charles I, who had seen a portrait of his Chapelmaster by Van Dyck, sent for him to come to England. On this occasion the painter was warmly welcomed, lodged by the King at Blackfriars, and, in the following year was knighted and given a pension for life. Van Dyck was the second painter to have an English Knighthood. Thenceforward Van Dyck lived very grandly, having a town house and also a country house at Eltham. He was always magnificently dressed, had numerous coaches and horses, and kept so good a table that few princes were better served. Van Dyck died in London in 1641, at the age of forty-two, having left a prodigious amount of work and a fortune of £20,000 sterling, notwithstanding his expensive manner of living. He was buried in Old St. Paul’s, near the tomb of John of Gaunt; but his remains, of course, perished in the Great Fire of 1666.

In the short span of his life--forty-two years--he painted nearly a thousand pictures. Van Dyck has three styles. The first is his Italian period; the second, his Flemish period, dating from his return from Italy in 1626 to his departure for England in 1631; and the third, his English period, from 1631 to 1641. The latter period is the greatest and the most distinguished for grace, elegance, and aristocratic quality.

“More noble than Rubens in his choice of form,” writes Charles Blanc, “Van Dyck had fewer faults than his master, but perhaps also less grandeur. His color was as charming without being so splendid. His design was learned, but without pedantry; and his contours were always governed by the sentiment of grace, or fire of genius. Very nearly the equal of Titian in portraiture, Van Dyck has sometimes risen to a great height in his historical compositions, in which the beauty of the expression is often as admirable as the excellence of the touch.”

DÆDALUS AND ICARUS.

_Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641)._

_Collection of Mr. Frank P. Wood._

A treasure of art, long in England in the famous Collection of the late Earl Spencer, K. G., at Althorp, Northumberland, is Van Dyck’s poetic version of the ancient Greek myth regarding man’s attempt at flight. Van Dyck was so fond of this subject that he painted it more than once.

This work is an oil painting on canvas (46 × 35 inches).

The figures are nearly life-size and very finely modelled. Icarus is nude save for a red drapery caught around the waist by a narrow band of bluish green,--a rather strange aviator’s suit to our way of thinking to-day! The position of his right hand would seem to tell us that Icarus is about to speak to his father, who, standing behind him, has apparently just fastened on his son’s wings and who appears to be giving him that sage advice about flying too near the sun. The flashing eyes and knitted brow of young Icarus indicate that this advice is not relished.

Max Rooses has noted that Icarus is not unlike the Angels that Van Dyck was fond of painting; calls attention to his beautiful, waving, golden hair; and finds a strong likeness between Icarus and the artist himself in his youth. One of the wings shows a white interior and the other, in the shadow, a bluish green exterior.

[Illustration:

_Collection of Mr. Frank P. Wood_

DÆDALUS AND ICARUS

--_Sir Anthony Van Dyck_]

Dædalus was a mythical personage under whom the Greek writers personified the earliest development of human flight and also the arts of sculpture and architecture. Some traditions represent Dædalus as of the royal race of the Erechthidæ and others make him a Cretan. Dædalus devoted himself to sculpture and taught his sister’s son, Talus, who soon surpassed him. Consequently, in envy Dædalus killed this young rival. Condemned to death in Athens for this murder, Dædalus fled to Crete, where his fame won him the friendship of King Minos. When Queen Pasiphae gave birth to the Minotaur, Dædalus constructed the Labyrinth at Cnossus in which the Minotaur was kept; and for doing this King Minos imprisoned him. However, Pasiphae released him. This was of not much advantage, however, because King Minos had seized all the ships on the coast of Crete. “Necessity is the mother of invention:” Dædalus had to get away. The question was “how?”. The result was that Dædalus made wings for himself and for his son, Icarus, and fastened them on the shoulders with wax, cautioning the youth not to fly too close to the sun. Icarus would not pay attention to this advice and, flying too high, the wax melted and he dropped down and was drowned in that part of the Ægean Sea, which is now called after him the Icarian Sea.

Dædalus, however, flew safely over the Ægean and reached Sicily, where he was protected by Cocalus, King of that Island. When King Minos heard where Dædalus had taken refuge he sailed with a great fleet to Sicily; but was murdered there by Cocalus. According to some accounts, Dædalus alighted on his flight from Crete at Cumæ in Italy, where he erected a temple to Apollo in which he offered the wings with which he had flown. Like Lindberg, his descendant, he placed his “We” in a museum!

Many works of art were attributed to Dædalus in Greece, Italy, Egypt, and the islands of the Mediterranean. Also the Greeks gave the name of Dædala to the ancient wooden statues of the gods ornamented with gilding, bright colors, and real drapery.

It is appropriate to add here a sonnet by an old French poet, Philippe Desportes (1545–1606) entitled “Icare”:

_ICARE_

_Icare est chut ici, le jeune audacieux, Qui pour voler au ciel eut assez de courage: Ici tomba son corps dégarni de plumage, Laissant tous braves cœurs de sa chute envieux._

_O bienheureux travail d’un esprit glorieux, Qui tire un grand gain d’un si petit dommage! O bienheureux malheur plein de tant d’avantage, Qu’il rende le vaincu des ans victorieux!_

_Un chemin si nouveau n’étonna sa jeunesse, Le pouvoir lui faillit, mais non le hardiesse; Il eut pour le brûler des astres le plus beau;_

_Il mourut poursuivant une haute aventure; Le ciel fut son désir, la mer sa sépulture; Est-il plus beau dessein, ou plus riche tombeau?_

ROBERT RICH, EARL OF WARWICK.

_Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641)._

_Collection of Mr. Jules S. Bache._

In silver doublet with slashed sleeves embroidered with flowers, crimson knee-breeches edged with gold braid, pink silk stockings and white shoes with lace rosettes (or “shoe roses,” as they were called in those days), a crimson cloak thrown over his left shoulder and held by his gloved hand, white lawn collar and cuffs edged with handsome lace, Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, stands before us, a picture of elegance, manly beauty, and aristocratic _hauteur_. He is standing full front with his head turned three-quarters to the left, in which direction he is also looking, and he is holding his black felt hat in his right hand. His armor and _bâton_ of command are lying on the ground by his side. The embroidered curtain in the background does not prevent us from seeing a naval engagement on his right.

Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, came of very distinguished ancestry on the maternal line, for his mother was Penelope Devereux, the sister of Essex, whose mother, Lettice Knollys, had been Maid of Honor to Queen Elizabeth (and who captivated the Earl of Leicester), and whose father, Walter Devereux, was first Earl of Essex (died 1576). Penelope’s father had wished her to marry Sir Philip Sidney; but the Earl of Huntingdon, Penelope’s guardian, ruled otherwise and forced her to marry Lord Rich, “a man of independent fortune and a known estate but otherwise of an uncourtly disposition, unsociable, austere, and of no agreeable conversation to her.”

Lady Rich, the most beautiful woman in all London, particularly famous for her sparkling black eyes, plunged wildly into society and was the most admired and courted woman of the Court. She played, too, a leading

## part in the rebellion of her distinguished brother, Essex. Lady Rich

lives in literature as Sidney’s Stella. The romance between these lovers, “Astrophel and Stella,” never cooled. When Sidney learned of Penelope’s marriage to “the rich Lord Rich,” he played with her new name as follows:

“Towards Aurora’s court a nymph doth dwell, Rich in all beauties which man’s eye can see; Beauties so far from reach of words that we Abase her praise saying she doth excel: Rich in those gifts which give the eternal crown; Who, though most rich in these and every part Which makes the patents of true worldly bliss, Hath no misfortune but that Rich she is.”

Lord Rich was created Earl of Warwick in 1618; but he had been divorced from Lady Rich in 1605, thirteen years before he succeeded to this title. On obtaining her divorce Lady Rich then married Charles Blount, Earl of Devonshire and eighth Baron Mountjoy, who, in defense of his marriage, wrote the following: