Part 14

It is instructive to notice how the art of Rubens was characteristic of the circumstances of his life and time. In the first place, though he travelled in many lands, Rubens remained to the end a Fleming, every inch of him.[70] "A man long trained to love the monk's visions of Fra Angelico, turns in proud and ineffable disgust from the first work of Rubens which he encounters on his return across the Alps. But is he right in his indignation? He has forgotten that while Angelico prayed and wept in his _olive shade_, there was different work doing in the dank fields of Flanders;--wild seas to be banked out; endless canals to be dug, and boundless marshes to be drained; hard ploughing and harrowing of the frosty clay; careful breeding of stout horses and fat cattle; close setting of brick walls against cold winds and snow; much hardening of hands and gross stoutening of bodies in all this; gross jovialities of harvest homes and Christmas feasts which were to be the reward of it; rough affections, and sluggish imaginations; fleshy, substantial, iron-shod humanities, but humanities still; humanities which God had his eye upon, and which won, perhaps, here and there, as much favour in his sight as the wasted aspects of the whispering monks of Florence. (Heaven forbid it should not be so, since the most of us cannot be monks, but must be ploughmen and reapers still.) And are we to suppose there is no nobility in Rubens's masculine and universal sympathy with all this, and with his large human rendering of it, Gentleman though he was, by birth, and feeling, and education, and place; and, when he chose, lordly in conception also? He had his faults, perhaps great and lamentable faults, though more those of his time and his country than his own; he has neither cloister breeding nor boudoir breeding, and is very unfit to paint either in missals or annuals; but he has an open sky and wide-world breeding in him, that we may not be offended with, fit alike for king's court, knight's camp, or peasant's cottage." It is thus that Rubens was a child of Flanders. But he was also a child of the intellectual time in which he lived. He was born at a time, says Ruskin, when the Reformation had been arrested--his father, curiously enough, had fled from Antwerp as a Reformer, but afterwards returned to Catholicism. "The Evangelicals despised the arts, while the Roman Catholics were effete or insincere, and could not retain influence over men of strong reasoning power. The painters could only associate frankly with men of the world, and themselves became men of the world. Men, I mean, having no belief in spiritual existences, no interests or affections beyond the grave. Not but that they still painted Scriptural subjects. Altarpieces were wanted occasionally, and pious patrons sometimes commissioned a cabinet Madonna. But there is just this difference between men of this modern period and the Florentines or Venetians--that, whereas the latter never exert themselves fully except on a sacred subject, the Flemish and Dutch masters are always languid unless they are profane." Rubens was thus a man of the world. When a boy he was for some time page in the family of a countess at Brussels. But his bent towards art was too strong to be gainsaid. When only twenty-two he was already a master-painter in the Antwerp Guild. Two years later he went to Italy, and for eight years he was in the service of the Duke of Mantua. An excellent Latin scholar, he was also proficient in French, Italian, English, German, and Dutch. These gifts procured him diplomatic employment. In 1603 "the Fleming," as they called him, was sent on a mission to Spain. In 1608 news of his mother's illness reached him, and he hastened home, when he was appointed court-painter to the Archduke Albert, then Governor of the Netherlands. In 1620 he visited Paris, at the invitation of Mary de' Medici (a sister of the Duchess of Mantua), and received the commission for the celebrated series of pictures now in the Louvre, commemorating the marriage of that princess with Henry IV. of France. In 1628 Rubens was sent on a mission to Philip IV. of Spain, and made the acquaintance of Velazquez. The great decorative master and the great realist (his junior by twenty-two years) painted together, travelled together, and talked together for eight or nine months. Rubens, we are told, was never so well pleased as when he was in the company of Velazquez, and Velazquez showed no resentment at the commissions given by the court to the foreign painter. In 1629 Rubens was sent to Charles I. of England (_see under_ 46), by whom, in the following year, he was knighted. He was also given an honorary degree by the University of Cambridge. On this occasion, Rubens was commissioned to paint the pictures which adorn the ceiling of the Banqueting Hall of Whitehall (now the United Service Institution). Wherever he went Rubens continued to paint, and his diplomacy he considered as mere recreation. "The painter Rubens," he is reported to have said of himself, "amuses himself with being ambassador." "So said one with whom, but for his own words, we might have thought that effort had been absorbed in power, and the labour of his art in its felicity." How hard he laboured is known by the enormous number of his works which still survive, by the large fortune he amassed, and by the great request in which his talents were held. "Whatever work of his I may require," wrote a 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 100 florins." But of the several thousands of works ascribed to the master, many were painted from his sketches by pupils and assistants. "To put it plainly, Rubens established a picture factory at Antwerp. He was thus enabled to paint portraits, landscapes, hunting scenes, and pictures of _genre_, as well as to undertake several series of gigantic decorations as important as those of Raphael or Michael Angelo. The master made small, lively sketches of the work to be done, the pupils laid them in, each doing what suited his talent, while Rubens reserved to himself the duty of bringing the picture together; in some cases by using the work beneath as a ground for almost complete repainting, in most cases by mainly correcting here and there, or enhancing the effect with a few brilliant and dexterous touches" (R. A. M. Stevenson's "_Portfolio_ monograph" on Rubens). Brueghel, Snyders, Teniers, and Van Dyck were among his assistants. Some of Rubens's letters contain curious information on his methods. Thus he offers to Sir Dudley Carleton certain pictures in exchange for a collection of antique marbles. Among them was to be "'A Last Judgment,' begun by one of my pupils after an original which I made of much larger size for the Prince of Neubourg, who paid me for it 3500 florins in ready money. As the present piece is not quite finished, I will retouch it altogether by myself, so that it can pass for an original: 1200 florins."

Rubens was unspoilt by success. Like many other great artists, he is conspicuous for "a quite curious gentleness and serene courtesy.... His letters are almost ludicrous in their unhurried politeness. He was an honourable and entirely well-intentioned man, earnestly industrious, simple and temperate in habits of life, highbred, learned, and discreet. His affection for his mother was great, his generosity to contemporary artists unfailing." He was twice married. In 1626 his first wife, Isabella Brant, died. Four years later he married Helena Fourment, a beautiful girl of sixteen, the living incarnation of his feminine type. "At the time of his second marriage Rubens was fifty-three years of age. He led a serious, happy, retired life. His leisure time he devoted to his family, to a few friends, to his correspondence, his collections, and his rides." "In the morning," we read, "he rose very early, and while he painted someone read aloud Livy, Plutarch, Cicero, Virgil or other poets. Then he would stroll in his gallery to stimulate his taste by the sight of the works of art he had brought from Italy. On other occasions he would study science, in which he always retained an active interest. Although he lived splendidly, he ate and drank moderately, and the gout from which he suffered in later life was certainly undeserved. He painted in the afternoon till towards evening, when he mounted a horse and rode out of the town." His house at Antwerp still stands; as also does his country-house, near Mechlin, of which there is a view in our Gallery (No. 66) (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 15, sec. ii. ch. ii. § 12; vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. i. ch. i. § 2; vol. iv. pt. v. ch. i. § 17; vol. v. pt. viii. ch. iv. § 21, pt. ix. ch. vi. §§ 1-9; _On the Old Road_, i. 185, 186; _Stones of Venice_, vol. i. App. 15; Wauters, _The Flemish School_, p. 214).

"A miracle of agitation. A flush tide of the richest colour, which positively seems to boil up in swirling eddies of harmonious form. Its whole surface is swept by lines which rush each other on like the rapid successive entrances of an excited _stretto_, till the violent movement seems to undulate the entire pattern of the picture" (R. A. M. Stevenson: _Velazquez_, 1899, p. 51). As for the subject, see for the story of the Sabine women under 644. But the subject in this case does not greatly matter. "Rubens in one of his most marvellous pictures, the Rape of the Sabines, which hangs in the National Gallery, did not even take the trouble to dress his Sabines in the costumes of their day. Without any more ado he dressed them in the style of the seventeenth century. One might rather think it a kidnapping of beautiful Antwerp women on a Flemish fair-day. But what difference does it make? He has _made_ white shoulders that shine, sumptuous stuffs, warriors with glittering arms--all which is instinct with life, and blazes with the deepest colouring of the greatest of Flemish masters. The colourists have never considered the subject otherwise than as a means of representing life under such and such actions, or such and such aspects, joyful or sad, or simply plastic" (Benjamin Constant in _North American Review_, Nov. 1900).

39. THE NURSING OF BACCHUS.

_Nicolas Poussin_ (French: 1593[71]-1665).

The life of Nicolas Poussin may be summed up in the cry of Æneas, _Italiam petimus_--we make for Italy. He was born in Normandy, of a noble family, and first learnt painting under Quintin Varin at Les Andelys. When eighteen he went to Paris and became acquainted with Courtois, the mathematician, whose collection of Italian prints fired him with a desire to go to Rome. This devotion to Rome became from that day the leading point alike in his life and in his art. Among the artist friends of his wandering years was Philippe de Champaigne (see under 798). After several unsuccessful efforts to get to Rome, Poussin made the acquaintance at Lyons of the Italian poet Marino, who invited him to Rome (1624), and introduced him to Cardinal Barberini. The Cardinal, however, was called away, and for a time Poussin's life in Rome was one of severe struggle. He also fell ill, and was nursed by a compatriot, Dughet, whose daughter he afterwards married. The wife brought her husband a comfortable dowry, with which a house was bought, and the painter, now released from the pinch of poverty, was able to give free play to his talents. In 1640 he returned to Paris, where he was introduced by Richelieu (for whom amongst other pictures he painted No. 62 in this Gallery) to Louis XIII. The king appointed him his painter-in-ordinary, with a salary of £120 and rooms in the Tuileries, but two years later, disgusted with the intrigues and jealousies of Paris, and being anxious to rejoin his wife, he returned to Rome, where he remained--full of work--for the rest of his life. His house on the Pincian, adjoining the church of the Trinita, may still be seen, and he is buried in the church of St. Lorenzo. Poussin, says his biographer, Bellori, led a regular life, rising early and taking a walk for one or two hours, sometimes in the city, but more often on Monte Pincio, not far from his house. From these lovely gardens he could enjoy the view of Rome on its hills; there he met his friends and discoursed on curious and learned topics. "In the evening he went out again and walked on the Piazza di Spagna, at the foot of the hill, in the midst of the strangers who congregate there. He always had friends with him, and often they made a kind of retinue. He spoke often of art, and so clearly, that artists and all cultivated men of talent came to hear his beautiful and profound thoughts about painting." "During my sojourn in Rome," says a traveller of that period, "I often saw Poussin. I admired the extreme love this excellent painter had for perfection in his art. I met him among the ruins of Rome, in the Campagna, and on the banks of the Tiber, and I saw him carry home stones, moss, flowers, and other things, in order to paint them from nature. One day I asked him how he had attained such an elevation among the greatest artists of Italy. He answered modestly, 'I have neglected nothing.'"

It is Rome which gives the leading idea also to Poussin's art. He has been called the "Raphael of France"; and certain it is that at a time when the local art of France was purely decorative in character, he returned, and strenuously adhered, to classical traditions. Already at Paris he had studied casts and prints after Raphael; and when he first went to Rome he lived with Du Quesnoy ("Il Fiammingo"), under whom he learnt the art of modelling _bassi-relievi_. He also studied anatomy, and attended the academy of Domenichino, whom he considered the first master in Rome. His profound classical learning has caused him to be called "the learned Poussin." "He studied the beautiful," says his biographer, "in the Greek statues of the Vatican." "He studied the ancients so much," says Sir Joshua Reynolds, "that he acquired a habit of thinking in their way, and seemed to know perfectly the actions and gestures they would use on every occasion." His learning went, however, farther than this in its influence on his art. His ideal, says Lanzi, was that of "philosophy in painting"; and in one of his letters Poussin illustrates the idea from the Greek theory of "modes" in music. If a subject were serious, it should be painted in the Doric mode; if vehement, in the Phrygian; if plaintive, in the Lydian; if joyous, in the Ionic.[72] This classical learning of Poussin was the source at once of his strength and of his weakness as an artist. On the one hand, it often made his work wonderfully harmonious and impressive. Thus in the Ionic mode, his Bacchanalian pictures in this Gallery and elsewhere are nearly the best representations in art of the Epicurean ideal of life, of a world in which enjoyment is the end of existence. "His best works," says Ruskin, "are his Bacchanalian revels, always brightly wanton, full of frisk and fire; but they are coarser than Titian's[73] and infinitely less beautiful. In all minglings of the human and brutal character he leans on the bestial, yet with a sternly Greek severity of treatment." Again, in more serious Doric mode, he is "the great master of the elevated ideal of landscape." He does not "put much power into his landscape when it becomes principal; the best pieces of it occur in fragments behind his figures. Beautiful vegetation, more or less ornamental in character, occurs in nearly all his mythological subjects, but his pure landscape is notable only for its dignified reserve; the great squareness and horizontality of its masses, with lowness of tone, giving it a deeply meditative character:" see especially 40. On the other hand, he had the defects of his training. It made him too restrained and too cold. "His peculiarities are, without exception, weaknesses, induced in a highly intellectual and inventive mind by being fed on medals, books, and _bassi-relievi_ instead of nature, and by the want of any deep sensibility." Thus he "had noble powers of design, and might have been a thoroughly great painter had he been trained in Venice;[74] but his Roman education kept him tame; his trenchant severity was contrary to the tendencies of his age, and had few imitators, compared to the dashing of Salvator and the mist of Claude. These few imitators adopted his manner without possessing either his science or invention; and the Italian School of landscape soon expired.... This restraint, peculiarly classical, is much too manifest in him; for, owing to his habit of never letting himself be free, he does nothing as well as it ought to be done, rarely even as well as he can himself do it; and his best beauty is poor, incomplete and characterless, though refined." Finally, his "want of sensibility permits him to paint frightful subjects without feeling any true horror; his pictures of the plague are thus ghastly in incident, sometimes disgusting, but never impressive:" see 165 (collected from _Modern Painters_, vol. i. preface, p. xxv., pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 14; vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. ii. ch. ii. § 19; vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. xviii. § 28; vol. v. pt. ix. ch. v. § 17).

The wine-god is represented in infancy, nursed by the nymphs and fauns of Euboea, and fed not on milk but on the juice of the grape. "The picture makes one thirsty to look at it--the colouring even is dry and adust. The figure of the infant Bacchus seems as if he would drink up a vintage--he drinks with his mouth, his hands, his belly, and his whole body. Gargantua was nothing to him" (Hazlitt: _Criticisms on Art_, p. 33).

40. LANDSCAPE: PHOCION.

_Nicolas Poussin_ (French: 1593-1665). _See_ 39.

"The work of a really great and intellectual mind, one of the finest landscapes that ancient art has produced"[75] (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. i. § 8),--its excellence consisting in the perfect harmony of the landscape with the subject represented, and thus marking the painter's sense of the dependence of landscape for its greatest impressiveness on human interest. In the foreground to the left is Phocion "the good"--the incorruptible Athenian general and statesman, contemporary with Philip and Alexander the Great, of whom it is recorded that he was "never elated in prosperity nor dejected in adversity," and "never betrayed pusillanimity by a tear nor joy by a smile." He wears an undyed robe, and is washing his feet at a public fountain, the dress and action being thus alike emblematic of the purity and simplicity of his life. In entire keeping with this figure of noble simplicity is the feeling of the landscape in which "all the air a solemn stillness holds." In detail, however, Ruskin finds the picture deficient in truth--false, indeed, both in tone and colour (see _ibid._, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. ii. § 5).

41. THE DEATH OF PETER MARTYR.

_Ascribed to Cariani. See under_ 1203.

For the legend, see under 812--a more pleasing version of the same subject. The man was afterwards regarded as a martyr and canonised; and here, too, notice that he is made to see the angels as he dies.

42. A BACCHANALIAN FESTIVAL.

_Nicolas Poussin_ (French: 1593-1665). _See_ 39.

A realisation of the classic legends of mirth and jollity, precisely in the spirit of Keats's ode _On a Grecian Urn_--

What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loath? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

"This masterpiece, conceived in the manner of Titian and imbued with the spirit of the antique, full of life, and incomparable for its qualities of drawing and painting, is perhaps the most beautiful work which Nicolas Poussin ever painted, and, with the 'Bacchanalian Dance' (No. 62), is among the most valued possessions of the National Gallery" (Poynter: _The National Gallery_, ii. 104).

43. CHRIST TAKEN DOWN FROM THE CROSS.

_Rembrandt_ (Dutch: 1606-1669). _See_ 45.

A sketch for a composition which Rembrandt etched and also drew. The drawing is in the British Museum. This sketch was formerly in the possession of Sir Joshua Reynolds, at whose sale it was bought by Sir George Beaumont.

44. A BLEACHING GROUND.

_J. van Ruysdael_ (Dutch: 1628-1682). _See_ 627.

This little picture, which dates from the earliest days of the National Gallery, was for many years obscured with dirt and not exhibited to the public. It has recently been cleaned, and shows one of the painter's favourite subjects--the bleaching grounds in the neighbourhood of Haarlem. Before the discovery of chemical means of bleaching linen, these were a great source of income to the town. Linen was brought here from all parts of the continent to be bleached, and then went back as Dutch linen or Holland.

45. THE WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY.

_Rembrandt_ (Dutch: 1606-1669).