Six Centuries of Painting Part 10

BERNARD VAN ORLEY, born at Brussels in 1471, is characterised in the catalogue of the National Gallery as "taking his place after Ma.s.sys and Mabuse on the downward slope of Netherlandish painting." He has been immortalised by the fine portrait head of him by Albert Durer which is now in the Dresden Gallery. He was Court painter to Margaret of Austria, Governess of the Low Countries, and retained the same post under her successor, Mary of Hungary. He is said to have visited Rome in 1509, and there made the acquaintance of Raphael, whose influence is certainly apparent, though hardly his inspiration, in the _Holy Family_ in the Louvre. A more Netherlandish work, both in feeling and in treatment, is the _Pieta_ in the Gallery at Brussels.

IAN SCOREL, born in 1495, was a pupil of Mabuse, and appears to have been the first to introduce the Italian style into his native country--Holland. When on a pilgrimage to Palestine he happened to pa.s.s through Rome at the time his countryman was raised to the papal dignity as Adrian VI., and after painting his portrait he was appointed overseer of the art treasures of the Vatican. Returning to Utrecht, where he died, he painted the picture of the _Virgin and Child_, with donors, which is now in the Town Hall.

A fine portrait by Scorel of Cornelius Aerntz van der Dussen is in the Berlin Gallery.

The decided and strongly realistic style in which Quentin Ma.s.sys had painted scenes from common life, as for instance the Misere or Money Changers, became the model for various painters in their treatment of similar subjects. First among these was his son, JAN Ma.s.sYS, born about 1500, who followed closely but rather clumsily in his father's footsteps, and need only be mentioned for carrying on the tradition.

More interesting were the Breughels, namely, PIETER BREUGHEL the elder, born about 1520, called Peasant Breughel, and his two sons Pieter and Jan. Old Breughel is best studied at Vienna, where there are good examples of his various subjects, notably a _Crucifixion_ and _The Tower of Babel_--both dated 1563--and secular scenes like _A Peasant Wedding_ and a _Fight between Carnival and Lent_, which are full of clever and droll invention.

His elder son, Pieter, was called h.e.l.l Breughel, from his choice of subject. He is far inferior to his father or to his younger brother Jan, called Velvet Breughel, born in 1568. Though more especially a landscape painter, Jan also takes an important place in the development of subject pictures, which, though seldom rising above a somewhat coa.r.s.e reality, are of a lively character, and worthy forerunners of the more accomplished productions of Teniers, Ostade, and Brouwer.

It is in portrait painting, however, that the Netherlandish School chiefly distinguished itself during its decline in the seventeenth century, and had all its sons remained in the country to enhance its glory, it is probable that the effect on the general practice of painting would have been more than beneficial. But portrait painters have not always been content to sit at home and wait for sitters to come to them, especially when the state of society in which they happen to find themselves makes waiting rather a long and tedious process. From the Reformation onwards, for over two centuries, there was a steady demand for portrait painters in England, and after the foundation of a really English school of painting by Reynolds in the middle of the eighteenth century, the stream of foreign, especially Netherlandish, talent never entirely ceased to flow. But confining ourselves for the present to the sixteenth century, we find that all the considerable Netherlandish portrait painters were employed for the most part outside their own country.

Typical of these is JOOS VAN CLEEF, of Antwerp, who died in 1540.

According to Vasari he visited Spain and painted portraits for the Court of France. At all events it is certain that he worked for a time in England, where the great success of Sir Antonio Mor is said to have disordered his brain. The few pictures that can be a.s.signed to him with any certainty thoroughly justify the high reputation he enjoyed in his time--the two male portraits for example at Berlin and Munich, the portraits of himself and his wife at Windsor, and his own at Althorp.

His style may be cla.s.sed as between that of Holbein and Antonio Mor. His well-drawn forms are decided without being hard, and his warm and transparent colouring recalls the great masters of the Venetian School.

II

PETER PAUL RUBENS

Dr Waagen thus summarises the history of painting in the Netherlands during the interval of about a century and a half that elapsed between the death of Jan van Eyck in 1440 and the birth of PETER PAUL RUBENS in 1577.

"The great school of the brothers van Eyck," he writes, "which united with a profound and genuine enthusiasm for religious subjects a pure and healthy feeling for nature, and a talent for portraying her minutest details with truth and fidelity, had continued till the end of the fifteenth century, and in some instances even later, to produce the most admirable works, combining the utmost technical perfection in touch and finish with most vivid and beautiful colouring. To this original school, however, had succeeded a perverted rage for imitating the Italian masters, which had been introduced into the Netherlands by a few painters of talent, particularly by Jean Mabuse and Bernard van Orley.

To display their science by throwing their figures into forced and difficult positions and strongly marking the muscles, by which they thought to emulate the grandeur of Michel Angelo, and to exhibit their learning by the choice of mythological and allegorical subjects, became the aim of succeeding painters, and before these false and artificial views of art, the spirit of religious enthusiasm and the pure, nave perception of the truth and beauty of nature gradually disappeared.

"In proportion as the Flemish painters lost the proper conception of form, and the feeling for delicacy and beauty of outline, it followed of course that they became more and more removed from nature in their desire to rival each other in the forced att.i.tudes of their figures, and in the exhibition of nudity, until at last such disgusting caricatures were produced as we find in the works of Martin Heemskirk or Franz Floris, artists who were even deficient in good colouring, the old inheritance of the school.

"Some few painters, however, whose feeling for truth and nature repelled them instinctively from a path so far removed from both, took to portraying scenes of real life with considerable humour and vivacity; or they delineated nature in her commonest aspects with great minuteness of detail; and thus _tableaux de genre_ and landscape originated. Although a few isolated efforts to introduce a better state of things were visible towards the end of the sixteenth century, it was reserved for a mind of no common power to bring about a complete revolution."

That Rubens was possessed of a "mind of no common power" will be readily admitted. He was an extraordinary person, in whom were combined such a variety of excellent qualities that there seems to have been no room left in him for any of the inferior ones which are usually necessary, as one must almost admit, for an alloy that will harden the finer metal for the practical purposes of success. With all his feeling for religion, he was seldom prudish; his amazing vitality never led him into excess or intemperance. His intense patriotism was all for peace; cla.s.sical learning never made him dry or b.u.mptious, nor the favour of kings servile. As fine a gentleman as Buckingham, he had no enemies.

Something more than temperament and natural ability, however, was necessary to make Rubens exactly what he turned out to be, and that was environment. Had he remained in Flanders all his life we should have been deprived of much that is most characteristic in his art. He was too big, that is to say, for the flower pot. He needed to be bedded out, so that his exuberant natural genius might have the proper opportunities for expanding under suitable conditions. It was in Venice and Mantua, in Florence and Rome that he found himself, and took his measure from the giants.

Rubens was born in 1577 at Cologne, where his father, a jurist of considerable attainments, had taken refuge from the disturbances at Antwerp in 1566. He was christened Peter Paul in honour of the saints on whose festival his birthday fell--29th June. At the age of sixteen he was placed as a page in the household of the widowed Countess of Lalaing, but as he showed a remarkable love for drawing he was apprenticed first to Tobias Verhaegt, a landscape painter, and then to Adam Van Oort. The latter was so unsuitable a master, however, that Rubens was soon committed to the care of Otto Vennius, at that time Court painter to the Infanta Isabella and the Archduke Albert, her husband; he prospered so well that in 1600 Vennius advised him to go to Italy to finish his education as a painter.

Rubens was now in his twenty-third year, and besides being proficient in painting he was so well grounded in the cla.s.sics and in general education and manners that he was recommended by the Archduke to Vincenzio, Duke of Gonzaga, whose palace at Mantua was famous for containing an immense collection of art treasures, a great part of which within the next quarter of a century were purchased by King Charles, the Duke of Buckingham, and the Earl of Arundel. The influence exerted on the young painter by surroundings like these is exemplified in a note by Waagen:--

"Rubens during his residence at Mantua was so pleased with the _Triumph of Julius Caesar_ by Mantegna (the large cartoons now at Hampton Court Palace), that he made a free copy of one of them. His love for the fantastic and pompous led him to choose that with the elephants carrying the candelabra; but his ardent imagination, ever directed to the dramatic, could not be contented with this. Instead of a harmless sheep, which, in Mantegna, is walking by the side of the foremost elephant, Rubens has introduced a lion and a lioness, which growl angrily at the elephant. The latter is looking furiously round, and is on the point of striking the lion a blow with his trunk."

That Rubens should have been so specially attracted by Mantegna may seem a little surprising, until we remember that both were lovers and students of cla.s.sical antiquities--a fact that is often forgotten in recalling only the princ.i.p.al achievements of either. But it is important to know what sort of foundations underlie the most splendid erections if we wish to understand how they came into existence and what their place is in the history of the arts. A glance through Lempriere's _Dictionary_ may furnish a modern Academician with a subject for a popular picture,--but that is stucco rather than foundation. The roots of tall trees go deep. Rubens when he was in Rome studied the antiquities of the place with the utmost diligence and zeal, as is evidenced by a book published by his brother Philip in 1608.

It was in the autumn of this year that he received the news, when at Genoa, of his mother's illness, which induced him to return to Antwerp forthwith. On his arrival he found she had died before the messenger had reached Genoa.

After four months of mourning he was ready to return to Flanders; his sojourn of eight years in Italy had so far influenced him that he might have remained there indefinitely had it not been for the Archduke and the Infanta pressing him to remain at Brussels and attach himself to their Court. Another circ.u.mstance may possibly have weighed with him; for within a year we find him married to Elizabeth Brant, the daughter of a magistrate of Antwerp, and it was not at Brussels, but at Antwerp, that he took up his quarters. Here he proceeded to build a wonderful house--said to have cost him 60,000 florins--after designs of his own in the Italian style, which he filled with the treasures he had collected in Italy.

Rubens's first pictures were nearly all of them religious subjects.

Before he went to Italy he had painted an _Adoration of the Kings_, a _Holy Trinity_, and the _Dead Christ in the Arms of G.o.d the Father_, which was engraved by Bolswert. When Vincenzio sent him to Rome to copy pictures there for him, he found time to execute a commission which he received from the Archduke Albert to paint three pictures for the Church of Santa Croce di Gerusalamme, namely, the _Crowning with Thorns_, the _Crucifixion_, and the _Finding of the Cross_. A year later--after returning from a journey to Madrid--he painted the altar-piece for the Church of Santa Maria in Vallicella, in which the influence of Paul Veronese is conspicuous. At Genoa, he painted the Circ.u.mcision and S.

Ignatius for the church of the Jesuits.

One of the first pictures which he painted on his return to Antwerp was an altar-piece for the private chapel of the Archduke Albert, of the Holy Family. This picture was so much admired that the members of the fraternity of S. Ildefonso, at the head of which was the Archduke Albert, commissioned him to paint an altar-piece for the Chapel of the Order of S. James near Brussels. This picture, which is now at Vienna, represents the Virgin enthroned, surrounded by four female saints, putting the Cloak of the Order on the shoulders of S. Ildefonso. On the wings are the portraits of the Archduke and Isabella, with their patron saints.

Thus we find that, like the earliest painters in his own country as well as in Italy, the beginning of Rubens's art was under the influence of the Church. Further, we find that the most celebrated work of his earlier period, the _Descent from the Cross_, in the cathedral at Antwerp, was undertaken in circ.u.mstances which abundantly show how thoroughly he was imbued with the principles of the religion he professed. The story is that when preparing the foundations of his new house he had unwittingly trespa.s.sed upon a piece of ground belonging to the Company of Arquebusiers at Antwerp. A lawsuit was threatened, and Rubens, with all the vivacity of his nature, prepared measures of resistance. But when his friend Rockox, a lawyer, had proved him that he was in the wrong, he immediately drew back, and offered to paint a picture by way of compensation. The offer was accepted, and the Arquebusiers asked for a representation of their patron, S. Christopher, to be placed in his chapel in the cathedral. In the magnificent spirit which always distinguished the man, he presented to his adversaries not merely the figure of the great Saint, but an elaborate and significant ill.u.s.tration of his name (Christ-bearer). Thus, in the centre, the disciples are lifting the Saviour from the Cross; in the wings the Visitation--S. Simeon with Christ in his arms, S. Christopher with Christ on his shoulders, and an old hermit bearing a light.

Among the earlier examples of secular pictures one of the most famous is the portrait of himself and his bride, which is now in the Munich Gallery. This was painted in 1609, when Rubens was over thirty years old.

In 1627 Rubens went to Madrid on a diplomatic errand, but still as a painter, as we shall see when discussing his relations with Velasquez.

Towards the end of the year 1629 he was sent on another diplomatic mission, this time to England. The choice of an amba.s.sador could not have fallen on anyone better calculated to suit the personal character of Charles I., who was a pa.s.sionate lover of art and easily captivated by men of cultivated intellect and refined manners. Rubens therefore, in whom the most admirable and attractive qualities were united to the rarest genius as an artist, soon succeeded in winning the attention and regard of the king. At Paris, too, Rubens had made friends with Buckingham, who had purchased his whole collection of statues, paintings, and other works of art for about ten thousand pounds.

It was during his stay in London that he painted the picture now in the National Gallery, called _Peace and War_ (No. 46). This was intended as an allegory representing the blessings of peace and the horrors of war, which he presented to the king as a tangible recommendation of the pacific measures which he had come to propose. After the dispersion of the Royal Collection during the Commonwealth this picture was acquired by the Doria family at Genoa, where it was called, oddly enough, _Rubens's Family_. As a matter of fact the children are those of Balthazar Gerbier. He also painted the _S. George and the Dragon_, which is now at Windsor Castle, and made the sketches for the nine pictures on the ceiling of the Banqueting Hall--now the United Service Inst.i.tution Museum--in Whitehall. It was on this occasion, too, that he received the honour of knighthood from Charles I., who is said to have presented him with his own sword.

In the following year, 1630, Rubens married his second wife, Helena Fourment, who was only sixteen years old--he was now fifty-two or fifty-three. She belonged to one of the richest and most respectable families in Antwerp, and was by no means unworthy of the compliment of being painted in the character of the Virgin receiving instruction from S. Anne, in the picture which is still at Antwerp.

In 1633 his painting was again interrupted by a diplomatic mission, this time to Holland; and his remaining years were subject to more distressing interruptions, from the gout, to which he finally succ.u.mbed in 1640.

When we come to consider the English School of painting we shall see how much of its revival in the middle of the eighteenth century was due to the personality as well as to the genius of Sir Joshua Reynolds. In the Netherlands, likewise, it was not merely a great painter that was required to raise the art to life, but a great personality as well; and to the influence of Rubens may be attributed much if not all of the extraordinary fertility of the Flemish and Dutch Schools of the seventeenth century. Making every allowance for the difference in the times in which the Van Eycks and Rubens were working, there is no doubt that the former lived in too rarefied an atmosphere ever to influence their fellows, and with the exception of Hans Memling they left no

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XXIV.--RUBENS

PORTRAIT OF HeLeNE FOURMENT, THE ARTIST'S SECOND WIFE, AND TWO CHILDREN

_Louvre, Paris_]

one worthy to carry on their tradition. Rubens showed his contemporaries that art was a mistress who could be served in many ways that were yet unthought of, and that she did not by any means disdain the tribute of other than religious votaries. Beginning, as we have pointed out, with sacred subjects, Rubens soon turned to the study of the cla.s.sics, and found in them not so much the cla.s.sical severity that Mantegna had sought for as the pagan spirit of fulness and freedom. "I am convinced that to reach the highest perfection as a painter," he himself writes "it is necessary, not only to be acquainted with the ancient statues, but we must be inwardly imbued with the thorough comprehension of them.

An insight into the laws which pertain to them is necessary before they can be turned to any real account in painting. This will prevent the artist from transferring to the canvas that which in sculpture is dependent on the material employed--marble, for instance. Many inexperienced and indeed experienced painters do not distinguish the material from the form which it expresses--the stone from the figure which is carved in it; that which the artist forces from the dead marble, from the universal laws of art which are independent of it.

"One leading rule may be laid down, that inasmuch as the best statues of antiquity are of great value for the painter, the inferior ones are not only worthless but mischievous: for while beginners fancy they can perform wonders if they can borrow from these statues, and transfer something hard, heavy, with sharp outlines and an exaggerated anatomy to their canvas, this can only be done by outraging the truth of nature, since instead of representing flesh with colours, they do but give colour to marble.

"In studying even the best of the antique statues, the painter must consider and avoid many things which are not connected with the art of the sculptor, but solely with the material in which he worked. I may mention particularly the difference in the shading. In nature, owing to the transparency of the flesh, the skin, and the cartilages, the shading of many parts is moderated, which in sculpture appear hard and abrupt, for the shadows become doubled, as it were, owing to the natural and unavoidable thickness of the stone. To this must be added that certain less important parts which lie on the surface of the human body, as the veins, folds of the skin, etc., which change their appearance with every movement, and which owing to the pliancy of the skin become easily extended or contracted, are not expressed at all in the works of sculptors in general--though it is true that sculptors of high talent have marked them in some degree. The painter, however, must never omit to introduce them--with proper discretion.

"In the manner in which lights fall, too, statues are totally different from nature; for the natural brilliancy of marble, and its own light, throws out the surface far more strongly than in nature, and even dazzles the eye."

I have quoted rather more of this pa.s.sage (from Mrs Jameson's translation) than I at first intended, because it discloses one of the most important secrets of the successful painting of figures, by other artists besides Rubens himself--George Romney for example. The advantages of a "cla.s.sical education" at our English public schools and universities are questioned, and there can be no doubt that for the bulk of the pupils they are questionable. But Rubens shows that the case is exactly the same for painters studying cla.s.sical art as for scholars acquainting themselves with cla.s.sical literature. A superficial study of the antique, just because it is antique, is of no use at all, but rather a hindrance. But if the study is properly undertaken, there is no surer foundation, in art or literature, on which to build. It makes no difference what is built; the foundation is there, beneath the surface, and whatever is placed upon it will stand for all time.

The remarkable freedom and originality of Rubens's treatment of cla.s.sical subjects is thus accounted for. Under the surface is his familiarity with the antique, but instead of carrying this above ground, he builds on it a palace in accordance with the times and circ.u.mstances in which he lived. The principles of cla.s.sical art underlie the modern structure. Among his numerous works of cla.s.sical mythology the picture at Munich of _Castor and Pollux_ carrying off the daughters of Leucippus is worthy of being first mentioned. The Dioscuri mounted on spirited steeds, one of which is wildly rearing, are in the act of capturing the two damsels. The calm expression of strength in the male, and the violent but fruitless resistance of the female figures, form a striking contrast. Although the former are merely represented as two coa.r.s.e and powerful men, and the women have only common and rather redundant forms and Flemish faces, yet the picture produces as a whole such a striking effect, owing to the admirable manner in which the subject is conceived, the power of imagination which it displays, and the exquisite colouring and tone, that it would never occur to any unprejudiced spectator to regret the absence of antique forms and character.

Two other pictures of this cla.s.s are singled out for description by Waagen as masterpieces. One is the _Rape of Proserpine_, at Blenheim,--Pluto in his car, drawn by fiery brown steeds, is carrying off the G.o.ddess, who is struggling in his arms. The other is the _Battle of the Amazons_, in the Munich Gallery, which was painted by Rubens for Van der Geest. With great judgment he has chosen the moment when the Amazons are driven back by the Greeks over the river Thermodon: the battle takes place upon a bridge, and thus the horror of the scene is carried to the highest pitch.

Both in Flanders and in Italy Rubens had been brought into close contact with all the magnificence and splendour which belonged to those gorgeous times, and he delighted in representing the pomp of worldly state and everything connected with it. Of all sacred subjects none afforded such a rich field for display as the _Adoration of the Kings_; he has painted this subject no less than twelve times, and his fancy appears quite inexhaustible in the invention of the rich offerings of the eastern sages. Among the subjects of a secular character the history of Marie de'Medici, the triumph of the Emperor Charles V., and the Sultan at the head of his Army, gave him abundant opportunities of portraying Oriental and European pageantry, with rich arms and regalia, and all the pomp and circ.u.mstance of war. Profusion--pouring forth of abundance, that was one of Rubens's most salient characteristics. Exuberance, plenty, fatness.

As a painter of animals, again, Rubens opened out a new field for the energy of his fellow-countrymen, which was tilled so industriously by Frans Snyders and Jan Fyt, and in a lesser degree by the Dutchmen Jan Weenix, father and son, and Hondecoeter. That the nave instincts, agility, and vivacity of animals must have had a great attraction for Rubens is easily understood. Those which are remarkable for their courage, strength, intelligence, swiftness--as lions, tigers, wild boars, wolves, horses, dogs--particularly interested him. He paid special attention to animals, seized every opportunity of studying them from nature, and attained the most wonderful skill and facility in painting them. It is related that he had a remarkably fine and powerful lion brought to his house in order to study him in every variety of att.i.tude, and that on one occasion observing him yawn, he was so pleased with the action that he wished to paint it. He therefore desired the keeper to tickle the animal under the chin to make him repeatedly open his jaws: at length the lion became savage at this treatment, and cast such furious glances at his keeper, that Rubens attended to his warning and had the beast removed. The keeper is said to have been torn to pieces by the lion shortly afterwards: apparently the animal had never forgotten the affront put upon him.

By such means--though it is to be hoped not always with such lamentable results--Rubens succeeded in seizing and portraying the peculiar character and instinct of animals--their quick movements and manifestations of strength--with such perfect truth and energy that not one among the modern painters has approached him in this respect--certainly not Landseer, as Mrs Jameson would ask us to believe.