Great Artists Part 4

7. Some Spanish Portraits.

8. My Favorite Picture by Murillo.

9. Some Visions Seen by Murillo.

10. The Escurial--Its History.

REFERENCES FOR THE STUDY OF "MURILLO AND SPANISH ART."

De Amicis Spain.

Hoppin Murillo.

Minor Murillo.

Stirling Annals of Spanish Art.

Stowe Velazquez.

Washburn Early Spanish Masters.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

RUBENS

[Ill.u.s.tration: PETER PAUL RUBENS]

PETER PAUL RUBENS.

1577-1640.

In our study of Raphael, we had a glimpse of the golden age of art in Italy. In our work on Murillo, we saw what Spain was able to produce in pictures when the whole of Europe seemed to be trying its hand at painting. Moving north, we are to see in this sketch what the little country now known as Belgium produced in the same lines. For this we need hardly take more than the one name, Peter Paul Rubens, for he represented very completely the art of Flanders or Belgium, as we call it to-day.

If we love to read of happy, fortunate people, as I am sure we do, we shall be more than pleased in learning about Rubens. You know there is an old story, that by the side of every cradle stand a good and an evil fairy, who by their gifts make up the life of the little babe within. The good fairy gives him a wonderful blessing, perhaps it is the power to write poems or paint pictures. Then the bad fairy, ugly little sprite that he is, adds a portion of evil, perhaps it is envy that eats the soul like a canker. And so they alternate, the good and evil, until the sum of a human life is made up, and the child grows up to live out his years, marked by joy and sorrow as every life must be.

As we look at the men and women about us we feel, often, that one or the other of these fairies must have slept while distributing their gifts and so lost a turn or two in casting in the good or ill upon the babe, so happy are some lives, so sorrowful are others. At Rubens'

cradle the evil fairy must well nigh have forgotten his task, for the babe grew up one of the most fortunate of men.

In order to understand as we should any great man, we must always study his country and his time. No man can be great enough not to be like the nation that produced him, or the time when he came into the world. For these reasons we love to study a man's time and country, and, indeed, find it quite necessary if we would understand him aright.

It is impossible to think of Rubens without a.s.sociating him with Flanders and with Antwerp, his home city. Here, then, is just a little about the history of this most interesting country: One of the richest possessions of Spain in the sixteenth century was known as the Netherlands. When the doctrines of Luther began to spread many of the Netherlanders accepted them. Philip II., the terrible and gloomy king of Spain, seized this opportunity to persecute them cruelly. Many of them resisted, and then Philip sent his unscrupulous agent, the Duke of Alva, to make the people submit. This he partially accomplished by the greatest cruelty. The northern provinces, which we know as Holland, declared their independence. The southern, of which Flanders was the most flourishing province, longed so for peace and the prosperity that accompanies it, that they submitted to Spain. The people then grew rich as weavers, merchants and traders. Splendid cities like Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp became the seats of commerce and their artists and workmen of all sorts were known throughout Europe for their thrift and the excellence of their workmanship. We recall how Raphael's cartoons were sent to Flanders to be copied in tapestry the finest in the world.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUBENS' MOTHER _Rubens_]

Of all the cities dear to Flemish hearts Antwerp was, perhaps, the most beautiful and the most prosperous. It was situated on the river Scheldt about twenty miles from the sea. In the time of its greatness one might count almost at any time twenty-five hundred ships and boats riding at anchor in front of the city, and within her walls, two hundred thousand people lived in plenty. There were marble palaces, beautiful churches, a magnificent town hall (Hotel de Ville); and the houses of the humble showed by their cleanlines and comfortable surroundings that enjoyment of life was restricted to no one cla.s.s.

This matter of religious faith, however, was bound to come up again and bring, as it proved, ruin upon the city. A body of people who thought it wrong to have pictures and statues of saints, and of Mary and her Son, gathered together and for four days went from one Flemish town to another and destroyed everything of the sort to be found in the churches. Four hundred places of worship were desecrated, many of them within the city of Antwerp. Because of their zeal against the use of so-called _images_ they were called _Iconoclasts_.

If formerly they had been punished for _thinking_ things against the established religion of the State, what now could be expected when they had _done_ such sacrilegious things?

"Again the whiskered Spaniard all the land with terror smote; And again the wild alarum sounded from the tocsin's throat."

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUBENS AND HIS FIRST WIFE _Rubens_]

Our imagination cannot picture things so terrible as were perpetrated upon the inhabitants of Antwerp for their part in the destruction of the "images." This terrible event is known in history as _The Spanish Fury_. Thousands of her people were killed, most of her palaces were burned, and the treasure of her wealthy citizens was stolen. Property was confiscated to the Spanish Government. Death and terror, theft and rapine reigned in the beautiful city of the Scheldt.

When the dead were buried, the charred ruins of buildings removed, and the Spanish soldiery withdrawn, the mist-beclouded Netherland sun shone out on a dead city which even to-day bears marks of the Spaniard's fury. Gra.s.s grew in what had been its busiest streets, trade almost ceased, and thousands of weavers and other artisans went to England where they could pursue their vocations unmolested.

Philip was apparently satisfied with the chastis.e.m.e.nt he had inflicted. He began to restore the confiscated property to its rightful owners, and to encourage the industry he had so cruelly destroyed. He even made Flanders an independent province under the Archduke Albert and the Infanta Isabella. Although peace had returned and a degree of prosperity again prevailed, yet many other things were irretrievably gone, and the people lived every day in the sight of painful reminders of their former greatness.

In art, too, these low country provinces had made much progress. There had been Hubert and Jan Van Eyck who had painted with minute skill devout pictures. They had, moreover, given to the world the process of painting in oils. This discovery, worked out with the extreme care natural to the Netherlanders, changed the whole character of painting, and made it possible to have such colorists as t.i.tian, Raphael and Rubens. We must remember that the colors used in fresco painting were mixed with a sort of "size" and that they had none of the richness of oil colors. There had been other artists of note besides the Van Eycks. Hans Memling, with the spirit of a real poet, had painted his sweet visions, and to-day it is not for the opulent merchants who added fame and wealth to their city in their time, but for this poet-painter, Memling, that we venerate the ancient and stately city of Bruges. Quentin Matsys, the brawny blacksmith, who, for love of an artist's daughter, became a painter, comes to our minds as a name of no mean fame in the early records of Flemish painting.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HELEN FOURMONT, RUBENS' SECOND WIFE, AND YOUNGEST SON _Rubens_]

The guild system, where every cla.s.s of artisans was organized for protection and for the production of good work, touched even the fine arts. No man could set up for a good painter who had not served his apprenticeship, and whose work was not satisfactory to experts. When Rubens was born he came as the heir of all that had been accomplished before him. He only carried on what his predecessors had begun, but he carried it on in a matchless way so that he was able to leave to succeeding painters not only all he had inherited, but a goodly legacy besides--the legacy of a pure life, a glowing, natural, vigorous art.

It seems to me that right here is a lesson for us. May we not add our mite, tiny though it be, to the ever-growing volume of truth? I like this quotation in this connection, and I hope you may see its beauty too--"The vases of truth are pa.s.sed on from hand to hand, and the golden dust must be gathered into them, grain by grain, from the infinite sh.o.r.e."

Rubens' birth took place in 1577, the year following the Spanish Fury.

When he was only seven, William the Silent, the saviour and protector of the northern provinces, was a.s.sa.s.sinated at the instance of Philip II. When he was eleven, the Spanish _Armada_, the proudest fleet that ever sailed the seas, sent to invade England and punish Queen Elizabeth, was scattered by wind and wave and dashed to pieces on alien rocks. The Reformation was well established in England and Holland, while France, led by Henry IV., was yet uncertain whether or not to accept the new doctrines. Such were some of the portentous events that marked the advent and early years of the greatest of Flemish painters.

The family of Rubens' father had lived for years in Antwerp, but when Luther's doctrines were put forward Jan Rubens, the father of our artist, believed in them. For this reason he was compelled to flee from the city, and his property was confiscated. He went to the little village of Siegen, in western Germany, where his ill.u.s.trious son was born on June 29th, 1577. His birth was on the day dedicated to the saints, Peter and Paul, and so his parents gave the child their names.

After the residence of a year in this little town, the family removed to Cologne, where they lived for ten years, until the death of the father.

Jan Rubens was a lawyer and a learned man, and he took pains that his sons should be thoroughly educated. In addition to his heretical views regarding religion he had grievously offended William the Silent and so was doubly exiled. His wife remained with him, and by her efforts kept him from prison, and added cheer to his life of exile. This was the admirable Marie Pypeling, the mother so revered by Rubens, and so deserving the respect of all who know of her. A portrait of her by her son is given in this sketch. To her he owed his handsome face, his strong physique, his shrewdness and his love of order.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUBENS' DAUGHTER _Rubens_]

Immediately after the death of her husband, Marie Pypeling and her family, now consisting of two sons and a daughter, returned to Antwerp. Her property, which had been confiscated in those wild days at Antwerp, was restored to her in the general rest.i.tution with which Philip tried to compensate the citizens for their losses in the Spanish Fury. From this time Rubens was an adherent of the Catholic Church.

The education of Peter Paul, which was so carefully begun by his father, was continued by his mother, in a Jesuit College at Antwerp.

He was an apt student and soon attained the elements from which he became a very learned man. He knew seven languages, was interested and learned in science and politics. All through his life he devoted some part of each day, however busy he was with his painting, to general reading. This, perhaps more than his early studies, accounts for his elegant scholarship.

His mother was quite determined that this son should be, like his father, a lawyer. His own tastes, however, and a power to use the brush early displayed, decided otherwise. It very soon became evident that he was to be a painter--good or bad--who could tell in those early days?

In accordance with a custom of the time, he was placed as a page in the house of a n.o.bleman of Antwerp. To the talented and restless boy this life was intolerable, and he soon induced his mother to allow him to enter the studio of Van der Haeght, a resident artist of some repute and a close follower of Italian Art. He was only thirteen at this time. Here he learned to draw skillfully and, through the influence of his teacher, he acquired a love of landscape art which never left him.

From Van der Haeght and his mild but correct art, Rubens, feeling his weakness in figure work, went to the studio of the irascible and forcible painter Van Noort, about whom critics have delighted to tell stories of brutality. However true these may be, Rubens stayed with him four years and never ceased to speak in praise of his master's work. Here he became acquainted with Jordaens, who used often to paint the animals in Rubens' landscapes.

From Van Noort's studio the restless Rubens went to study with Van Veen, who afterwards became court-painter. When the Archduke Albert and Isabella entered Antwerp in 1594, it was Van Veen who decorated the triumphal arches used on the occasion. We may judge that he did the work well, for he was shortly selected to serve the new rulers as court painter. Rubens' experience with Van Veen closed a ten years'

apprenticeship in the studios of Antwerp, and now he determined to go to Italy, where he could study the masters at first hand.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUBENS' TWO SONS _Rubens_]

As a sort of parting work and, perhaps, because he wished to impress more vividly on his mind those dear, strong features of his mother, he painted that portrait of her which we so much admire both for its subject and its art. This image of his mother was an effectual charm to carry with him in his travels--a charm to save him perhaps, from some of the stumbling places into which a handsome young man away from home might wander.