The same critic adds this beautiful characterization of early Flemish art in general: “The paintings of Flanders were not, and were not intended to be, popular. Flemish artists did not, like the Italians, paint for the folk, but for the delight of a small clique of cultured and solid individuals. They painted as their employers worked, with energy, honesty and endurance; they cared not for beauty of the more palpable and less enduring kind, but they cared infinitely for Truth; for her they laboured in humility, satisfied with the joy of their own obedience, and then, when they slept and knew not of it, she came and clothed the children of their industry with her own unfading garments of loveliness and life.”
Between the glorious past of the van Eycks and Memling and the brilliant future of Rubens and Jordaens, stands Quentin Matsys, the founder of the Antwerp school, who died in 1530. He was the great master of the Gothic-Renaissance transition, showing the influence of the Renaissance, while still clinging to Gothic types. His paintings include religious subjects and incidents drawn from daily life. His “women of a goddess-like delicacy with almond eyes and long slim fingers,” lived a mystical life among transparent, glassy columns and carpets with exotic embroideries. The men have an air of distinction. He often leans as far toward caricature, however, as he does toward sentimentality, and there are great contrasts in his work—grimacing, long-nosed, carousing old men and lovely women. “None understands as well as Matsys how to make strong splendours of colour shine through a thin veil of mist, or how to paint the tremulous surface of life so that we see the blood running in the veins.”
From “Master Quentin’s” prime until Rubens brought back to Flanders the results of his studies in Italy was nearly one hundred years—years that covered the Spanish oppression of the Low Countries under Charles V and Philip II, years that saw Flanders desolated by the Duke of Alva. But out of the decay of Flemish art rose Peter Paul Rubens, born in 1577.
John Rubens, the father of the painter, was a lawyer in Antwerp. As he favoured the Protestants, he found it the safest course, when the Duke of Alva’s reign of terror began, to take refuge with his family across the border at Cologne. Here he became the legal adviser of Anne of Saxony, wife of William the Silent, who preferred to reside comfortably at Cologne while he was off fighting the Spaniards.
The result of this association was a scandal of the most serious nature, and only the efforts of his forgiving wife and the desire of the house of Orange to hush up the affair, saved Master Rubens from the penalty of death, as prescribed by the German law of that day. His sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life, but after two years of close confinement he was permitted to live with his family in Siegen, on condition of giving himself up again whenever summoned. It was during this time that Peter Paul, “the most Flemish of all the Flemings,” was born at Siegen, on German soil.
After the death of John Rubens, his widow returned with her family to Antwerp, where the little Peter Paul was sent to a school on the site of the present Milk Market, until he was thirteen years old. Then, as he was a bright, handsome boy, the Countess van Lalaing received him as page into her house, where she held a miniature court. He was in the service of the Countess only one year, but the training he gained in that time gave him the courtesy and ease of manners that made him, in after years, perfectly at home in the presence of princes.
In his boyhood Rubens had shown his love of art by making it his chief amusement to copy the illustrations in his mother’s large family Bible, and after leaving the Countess van Lalaing, he persuaded his mother to let him study painting. For four years he was the pupil of Adam van Noort, and afterward of Otto van Veen, also called Vaenius, after the fashion of the day. At that time van Veen was the most noted painter in Antwerp. Two years more of study, and Rubens was admitted into the Guild of St. Luke, and the following year he assisted his master in decorating the city for the Joyous Entry of the Archdukes Albert and Isabella.
The young painter’s next step was to seek inspiration in Italy, and in 1600 he went to Venice to study Titian and Veronese. Here he copied old masters, painted portraits, and attracted the attention of the Duke of Mantua, who became his patron. In 1603 he was sent to Spain by the Duke, and took with him many paintings as a present for Philip III. When he went home to Flanders in 1608, Albert and Isabella made him court painter in order that they might keep him in Antwerp.
Rubens was twice married. His first wife, Isabella Brant, made his home happy for seventeen years, and is commemorated in several paintings. Helena Fourment, whom he married four years after Isabella’s death, was a girl of sixteen who was considered remarkably beautiful, and if we may judge by the use he made of her as a model, this opinion of her was fully shared by her husband. Besides the numerous portraits of her—in every possible position, sitting, standing or walking, handsomely dressed or nearly nude, alone or with her husband or children, in her own person or as Bathsheba, Dido or Andromeda—she appears in such large compositions as the Garden of Love and the Judgment of Paris.
The paintings of Rubens have always been the special pride of Antwerp. The Elevation of the Cross and the Descent from the Cross were the treasures of the cathedral. The first was painted in 1610, soon after his return from Italy, and the second but little later. There are six known variants of the Descent from the Cross. The one in the cathedral is a wonderful composition, brilliant in its conception and marvelously drawn. The Elevation is by some critics considered finer than its companion picture. The Christ à la Paille, the “Coup de Lance,” the Adoration of the Kings, and the Last Communion of St. Francis are all in the Antwerp Museum.