RUBENS

If it be true that the spirit of a period can best be judged by its intellectual and artistic achievements, we ought certainly to find in the pictures of Rubens (1577-1640) an adequate expression of the tendencies and aspirations of the Counter Reformation in Belgium. Compared with the religious pictures of the Van Eycks and of Van der Weyden, such works as the "Spear Thrust" (Antwerp Museum), "The Erection of the Cross" and the "Descent from the Cross" (Antwerp Cathedral) form a complete contrast. There is no trace left in them of the mystic atmosphere, the sense of repose and of the intense inner tragedy which pervade the works of the primitives. Within a century, Flemish art is completely transformed. It appeals to the senses more than to the soul, and finds greatness in the display of physical effort and majestic lines more than in any spiritual fervour. Two predominant influences contributed to bring about this extraordinary transformation—the influence of Italy and that of the Catholic Restoration, specially as expressed by the Jesuits.

While, in the fifteenth century, Art, in the Low Countries, had remained purely Flemish, or, to speak more accurately, faithful to native tendencies, all through the sixteenth century the attraction of the Italian Renaissance became more and more apparent. We know that Van der Weyden, in 1450, and Josse van Ghent, in 1468, visited Italy, but they went there more as teachers than as students. Their works were appreciated by the Italian patrons for their intense originality and for their technical perfection. Jean Gossaert, better known as Mabuse on account of his being born in Maubeuge (c. 1472), was the first of a numerous series of artists who, all through the sixteenth century, considered the imitation of the Italian art of the period as an essential condition of success. Just as the primitive National school had been patronized by the dukes of Burgundy, the Italianizants were patronized by Charles V, Margaret of Austria and Mary of Hungary. The worship of Raphael and Michael Angelo, so apparent in the paintings of Van Orley, Peter Pourbus, J. Massys and many others, marks the transition between the primitive tendencies of Van Eyck and the modern tendencies of Rubens. Both tendencies are sometimes aptly combined in their works, and their portraits, especially those of Antoine Moro, still place the Antwerp school of the sixteenth century in the forefront of European Art, but the general decadence of native inspiration is nevertheless plainly apparent. The favour shown to these painters by the governors under Charles V and Philip II is significant. Whatever their personal opinions may have been, the Italianizants adapted themselves to the pomp displayed by the Monarchists and to the modern spirit of Catholicism, as opposed to the Reformation, whose critical and satiric tendencies were expressed, to a certain extent, by realists like Jérôme Bosch (1460-1516) and Peter Breughel (c. 1525-69) who painted, at the same time, genre pictures of a popular character and who remained absolutely free from Italian influence. The same opposition which divided society and religion reflected itself in Art.

RUBENS

Though he succeeded in transforming their methods, Rubens is nevertheless the spiritual descendant of the Italianizants. It is from them and from his direct contact with the works of Michael Angelo and Titian that he inherits his association of spiritual sublimity with physical strength. Adopting without reserve Michael Angelo's pagan vision of Christianity, he transformed his saints and apostles into powerful heroes and endeavoured to convey the awe and majesty inspired by the Christian drama through an imposing combination of forceful lines and striking colouring.

Rubens was chosen by the Jesuits to decorate the great church they had erected in Antwerp in 1620. Such a choice at first appears strange, considering that, on several occasions, Rubens does not seem to conform to the strict rule which the powerful brotherhood succeeded in imposing on other intellectual activities. Translated into poetry, such works as the "Rape of the Daughters of Lucippus," "The Judgment of Paris," "The Progress of Silenus," would suggest a style very much akin to that of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, and, needless to say, would never have passed the Church's censor. For the reaction against the moral license and the intellectual liberty of the previous century was by now completed. Higher education was monopolized by the reformed University of Louvain and the new University of Douai, and no Belgian was allowed to study abroad. All traces of Humanism had disappeared from Louvain, where Justus Lipsius remained as the last representative of Renaissance tendencies strongly tempered by orthodoxy. Scientific novelties were so much distrusted that when, in 1621, Van Helmont dared to make public his observations on animal magnetism, he was denounced as a heretic and obliged to recant. For fear of exposing themselves to similar persecutions, the historians of the time confined themselves to the study of national antiquities. The theatre was confined to the representation of conventional Passions and Mysteries and to the plays produced every year by the Jesuits in their schools.

pulpit of sainte gudule, brussels.
(Eighteenth century).
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Ph. B.

As a matter of fact, the tolerance and even the encouragement granted, at the time, to an exuberant display of forms and colours and to an overloaded ornamental architecture, were not opposed to the Jesuit methods. They were determined, by all means at their disposal, to transform the Low Countries into an advance citadel of Roman Catholicism. Their policy was far more positive than negative. They were far more bent on bringing to the Church new converts and stimulating the zeal of their flock than on eradicating Protestantism. They thought that the only means to obtain such a result was to attract the people by pleasant surroundings and not to rebuke them by morose asceticism. They were the first to introduce dancing, music and games into their colleges. They organized processions and sacred pageants. They surrounded the first solemn communion with a new ceremonial. They stimulated emulation and showered prizes on all those who distinguished themselves.

THE JESUITS

Society was merely for them a larger school in which they used the same means in order to consolidate their position. During the first years of the seventeenth century, an enormous number of new churches were built. Never had architects been so busy since the time of Philip the Good. The church of Douai, erected in 1583, was a replica of the Gésù in Rome, and the general adoption of the Italian "barocco" by the Jesuits has encouraged the idea, in modern times, that there really existed a Jesuit type of architecture. The flowery ornaments on the façades of these churches, their columns, gilded torches, elaborate and heavy designs, cannot be compared to Rubens's masterpieces, but, from the point of view of propaganda, which was the only point of view that mattered, the glorious paintings of the Antwerp master fulfilled the same purpose. They rendered religion attractive to the masses, they combined with music and incense to fill the congregation with a sacred awe conducive to faith.

It ought not to be assumed, however, that the painters of the period enjoyed complete liberty of expression. If the Church showed great tolerance with regard to the choice of certain profane subjects, Christian art was directly influenced by the reforms promulgated by the Council of Trent. In a pamphlet published in 1570 by Jean Molanus, De Picturis et Imaginibus sacris, the new rules are strictly set forth. All subjects inspired by the apocryphal books and popular legends are proscribed, and even such details of treatment as the representation of St. Joseph as an old man and the removal of the lily from the hand of the Angel of the Annunciation to a vase are severely criticized. The censors of the period would have given short shrift to Memling's interpretation of St. Ursula's story and all similar legends which could not be upheld by the authority of the Acta Sanctorum. This remarkable historical work, initiated by Bollandus at the time, endeavoured to weed out from the lives of the saints most of the popular anecdotes which had inspired mediæval artists. All episodes connected with the birth and marriage of the Virgin disappeared, at the same time, from the churches. The Jesuits were stern rationalists, and, considering themselves as the defenders of a besieged fortress, were determined not to lay the Church open to attack and to remove any cause for criticism. Their point of view was entirely contrary to that of the mediæval artists. For the latter, Art sprang naturally from a fervent mysticism, just as flowers spring from the soil. Its intimate faith does not need any effort, any artifices, to make itself apparent; even secondary works retain a religious value. The sacred pictures of the seventeenth century appear, in contrast, as a gigantic and wonderful piece of religious advertisement. Based on purely pagan motives, they succeed in capturing the wandering attention on some sacred subject, by overloading it with a luxury of ornament and an exuberance of gesture unknown to the primitives. The treatment may be free, it is even necessary that it should be so in order to flatter the taste of the period, but the repertory of subjects becomes more and more limited. Brilliant colours, floating draperies, powerful draughtsmanship, become the obedient servants of a stern and dogmatic mind. The pagans exalted sensuousness, the mediæval artists magnified faith, the artists of the Counter-Reformation used all the means of the former to reach the aim of the latter "ad majorem Dei gloriam."

INTELLECTUAL LIFE

The result of this intellectual and artistic movement was stupendous. While the Récollets and Capuchins, Carmelites, Brigittines, Ursulines and Clarisses worked among the poor, the Jesuits succeeded in capturing the upper classes. All the children of the rich bourgeoisie and the nobility attended their schools and colleges, and, in 1626, the number of pupils with their parents who had entered the Congregation of the Virgin reached 13,727. One might say that the Jesuits had taken intellectual power from the hands of the laity in order to wield it for the benefit of the Church. From their ranks rose all the most prominent men of the period, philosophers like Lessius, economists like Scribani, historians like the Bollandists, physicians, mathematicians, architects and painters.

The direct result of this clericalization of Art and Letters was to thwart the progress realized during the last century by the vulgar tongue. Latin replaced French in philosophy, history and science, and even in literature the elite preferred to express themselves in the classic tongue. Flemish was completely disdained. According to Geulinx, "it ought not to have been heard outside the kitchen or the inn." This period, which from the artistic point of view was marked by such bold innovations, favoured a reaction towards the mediæval use of Latin in preference to the vulgar tongue. But Latin was not read by the people.

Rubens was not only the most successful religious painter of his time, he was also the favourite and ambassador of Albert and Isabella, the great courtier and portrait painter and the decorator of the Luxemburg Palace in Paris. He not only paid court to the Church, he also placed his talent at the service of the sovereigns and nobles of his day, and certainly the encouragement given by the latter to pagan subjects may account for the leniency of the Church towards them. In 1636 the King of Spain ordered from the Antwerp master fifty-six pictures illustrating the Metamorphoses of Ovid, destined for his hunting lodge near Madrid. Rubens's pupil, Van Dyck, was the accomplished type of the court painter of the period. His portraits of Charles I and of his children and of Lord John and Lord Bernard Stewart are among the best-known examples of the work he accomplished in England.

BREUGHEL AND JORDAENS

There is a third aspect of Rubens which cannot be ignored and through which he may be associated with the realist artists of the seventeenth century, who succeeded in preserving a purely Flemish and popular tradition in spite of Italian and monarchist influences. The "Kermesse" of the Louvre and the wonderful landscapes disseminated in so many European museums are the best proofs that the master did not lose touch with his native land and with the people who tilled it. This special aspect of his art is even more prominent in the works of his follower, Jacques Jordaens (1593-1678). It is significant that the latter became a Calvinist in 1655. While Rubens and Van Dyck represent mostly the aristocratic and clerical side of the Flemish art of the period, Jordaens appears as the direct descendant of Jérôme Bosch and Peter Breughel. Breughel's satires, such as the "Fight between the Lean and the Fat" and the "Triumph of Death," show plainly that his sympathies were certainly not on the side of Spanish oppression. His interpretation of the "Massacre of the Innocents" (Imperial Museum, Vienna) is nothing but a tragic description of a raid of Spanish soldiery on a Flemish village. Quite apart from their extraordinary suggestiveness, these works, like most of Breughel's drawings and paintings, constitute admirable illustrations of the popular life of the Low Countries during the religious wars. It must never be forgotten that all through the sixteenth century, starting from Quentin Matsys, the founder of the Antwerp school, the popular and Flemish tradition remains distinct from the flowery style of the Italianizants. Though it is impossible to divide the two groups of artists among the two political and religious tendencies in conflict, the works of Breughel and Jordaens may be considered as a necessary counterpart to those of Frans Floris and Rubens if we wish to form a complete idea of the civilization of the period.

the massacre of the innocents (sixteenth century).
(Imperial Museum, Vienna.)
P. Breugghel.[]]
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CHAPTER XX