The Spell of Flanders / An Outline of the History, Legends and Art of Belgium's Famous Northern Provinces

by Edward Neville Vose

The Archdukes, who were relieved of the paralysing necessity of referring every important act to Madrid, did their best to heal the terrible wounds of the early years of the war and restore some degree of tranquillity and prosperity to their dominions. Religious persecutions ceased. Eager to win the love of their subjects, the Archdukes welcomed Rubens to Antwerp when he returned to his native city on the death of his mother in 1608, and in order to keep him from returning to Italy made him their court painter in 1609. During the remainder of his lifetime their favour never ceased, and on many occasions Rubens was sent as a special ambassador of the Government on important diplomatic missions. His courtly manners and stately appearance favoured him, as well as his now tremendous artistic reputation. He was knighted by Charles I, while on a visit to England, and created a Master of Arts by the University of Cambridge. Among his friends he numbered—besides his royal patrons, Moretus, the printer, and Rockox, the burgomaster—many of the most famous scholars and statesmen of his time. He was interested in literature and science as well as art in all its branches and wrote a vast number of letters on an astounding variety of subjects—one calculation places the total number at eight thousand!

PETER PAUL RUBENS.

As if his own achievements were not enough, the genius of Rubens was the torch that set aflame a renaissance of Flemish painting that made the later Flemish school, which justly bears his name, the peer of any in the long history of art. Of his many pupils the greatest is Anthony Van Dyck, who was born at Antwerp in 1599 and entered the studio of the master at the age of fifteen. In the little church of Saventhem, not far from Brussels, is the most famous of Van Dyck’s early paintings which shows his precocious talent. Rubens had urged his promising pupil to visit Italy, and not only gave him a letter of introduction but provided funds for the long journey. The youth set forth, but in a little village on the way there happened to be a kermesse into the merriment of which he entered heartily. Among others with whom he danced was a beautiful country girl with whom the artist fell so deeply in love that he was unable to proceed any further, but devoted himself for days to courting her. Meanwhile his funds ran out, and he bethought himself with horror, when it was too late, that this meant the abandonment of the trip to Italy. In his extremity he applied to the parish priest and offered to paint an altarpiece for the village church on very moderate terms. It is related that the priest smiled indulgently at the youth’s pretensions that he was a historical painter and put him off, saying that there were no funds. Van Dyck, however, persisted, and offered to paint the picture if provided only with the canvas, and leave the matter of the price to the curé’s liberality.

These terms could hardly be refused, and the young artist set to work with such energy that in a few weeks the picture was finished. The priest admired the work greatly, particularly the beautiful figure of the Saint—the subject selected having been Saint Martin dividing his Cloak among the Beggars—and sent for a connoisseur from Brussels to decide if he should keep the picture. The verdict was favourable, and the price paid to the artist enabled him to proceed on his journey to Italy. It is not reported whether the future painter of kings and courtiers ever returned to visit his fair inamorata of the kermesse, but this pretty story, which is told in a rare little book, “Sketches of Flemish Painters,” published at The Hague in 1642, was written by a contemporary, and may quite possibly have been true. At any rate, there is the painting itself to prove it.

On his return to Antwerp in 1625 Van Dyck left behind him in Italy more than a hundred paintings, in itself a prodigious achievement. He now began to work in his native city with a rapidity and perfection resembling his master’s and produced the altarpieces that are among the master works of Flemish churches. Here also he painted a marvellous galaxy of portraits of the great artists of his time and of the Flemish, French and Spanish nobility. His marvellous etchings also belong to this period, so that Antwerp is associated with much of his finest work in two great branches of art. In 1632 the artist went to London, which he had visited on one or two previous occasions, and became painter to the court of Charles I. Here he remained for the rest of his lifetime, painting more than three hundred and fifty pictures portraying the royal family and nobility of England. He died in 1641, or only a year after his master, leaving a record of varied achievement comprising more than one thousand, five hundred works. The museum at Antwerp possesses twelve of his paintings, of which one of the most interesting is the “Christ on the Cross” painted for the Dominican nuns in recognition of the care and tenderness with which they had nursed his father during the old man’s last illness. The catalogue of the museum somewhat conceals the artist’s name under the Flemish form, Antoon Van Dijck, which hardly suggests the brilliant and debonnaire Sir Anthony of Whitehall and the beauties of England under Charles the First. There are sixty-seven works by this master in Vienna, forty-one at Munich, thirty-eight at St. Petersburg, twenty-four at the Louvre, twenty-one in Madrid and nineteen in Dresden, but England possesses the largest collections of his productions, most of those he painted at London still remaining in the public and private galleries of that country.

It would be a tedious task to recount the names and works of the throng of lesser artists who studied at the feet of Rubens and Van Dyck during the fruitful years when those masters were giving their talents to the world with such amazing prodigality. Erasmus Quellin I, the Elder, was one of the first—a sculptor who founded a family of notable sculptors and painters who lived and gained renown at Antwerp for more than a century. Faid’herbe, whose work abounds at Malines, was another sculptor of the highest rank who was a direct pupil of Rubens; Dusquesnoy, Grupello and Verbrugghen were renowned sculptors who owed much to his influence.

“AS THE OLD BIRDS SING THE YOUNG BIRDS PIPE.”—JACOB JORDAENS.

After Rubens and Van Dyck the greatest name in the Flemish school of this brilliant period was that of Jacob Jordaens, who learned his art under Rubens’ old master, Adam Van Noort, and married his teacher’s beautiful daughter Catherine, who posed for many of his pictures. The numerous family gatherings depicted by this master are famous, one of the most characteristic of them all being the well-known “As the Old Birds Sing the Young Birds Pipe” in the Antwerp museum. His satyrs and peasants and rural scenes are among the finest products of the Flemish school. The religious pictures of Gaspard de Crayer and Gerard Zeghers, the portraits of Cornelius de Vos, and the animal pictures of Francis Snyders and John Fyts all belong to this epoch when Antwerp, although sinking in commercial and political importance, was making herself for all time one of the art capitals of the world.