The Louvre owes its almost unequalled wealth in paintings by Rubens to the master’s relations with Marie de Médicis and her Court; and to this reason is due the fact that by far the largest portion of the fifty-one authentic works wholly or partly from his brush, which now form part of this great collection, date approximately from, or immediately before and after, the time during which he was busy with the famous series painted by order of that queen for the decoration of the Luxembourg Palace, and now to be seen in a setting appropriate to their florid sumptuousness in the new Rubens Gallery at the Louvre. Even so, the collection comprises examples of every phase of the master’s colossal activity—religious and historical compositions, allegorical paintings, landscapes, portraits, still life, and even genre-pieces, like the Kermesse (No. 2115), in which he successfully competes with Teniers on a ground peculiarly his own.
Born at Siegen in 1577, Rubens received his artistic education at Antwerp from Tobias Verhaecht, a landscape painter, Adam van Noort, and O. van Veen. At the age of twenty-three he went to Italy and entered the service of Vincenzo Gonzaga of Mantua, studying in their own country the works of the great Italian masters, and especially the Venetians, from whose glorious colour he derived more benefit than from his early training. With the exception of a journey to the Court of Philip III. at Madrid, where he was sent on a mission by the Duke of Mantua in 1603, Rubens spent the eight years from 1600 to 1608 in the various Italian centres, and especially in Rome, where he painted, about 1606, the little Landscape with Ruins (No. 2119), which is of interest not only as showing to what degree he was at that time influenced by the Roman school, and by the Carracci, but also as being the very first landscape known to have been produced by him. The same view of the Palatine Hill is to be recognised in the background of the Four Philosophers at the Pitti Palace, and in the portrait of Woverius in the Arenberg collection. Of about the same time, though the figures would appear to have been added at a considerably later date, is the Landscape with a Rainbow (No. 2118).
RUBENS AT ANTWERP
Having returned to Antwerp in 1608, and married his first wife, Isabella Brant, in the following year, Rubens, who was now made Court painter to Archduke Albrecht, entered upon a period of stupendous artistic activity, which extended to about 1621, when he began to divide his time between art and diplomatic missions, and, having previously organised a vast studio with an army of assistants, often left the execution of his brilliant sketch designs to less capable hands. This early Antwerp period is not particularly well represented at the Louvre, although the collection includes The Virgin surrounded by the Holy Innocents (No. 2078)— a Virgin of characteristic Flemish coarseness and fulness of form, in the midst of a dense swarm of delicious, plump, dimpled, wingless angel-children, whose rosy baby-flesh is painted with inimitable mastery. The picture was painted about 1615, six years before The Virgin and Child within a Garland of Flowers (No. 2079), executed in 1621 for Cardinal Federigo Borromeo. The tasteless floral wreath in this picture, as in the similar versions at Munich and New York, is from the brush of Jan Brueghel. To about the year 1615 belongs also the Christ on the Cross, with the Virgin, the Magdalen and St. John (No. 2082), which can, however, hardly be entirely from the master’s own hand. The mass of unbroken vermilion in the robe of St. John is one of Rubens’s favourite devices at that period. The Resurrection of Lazarus (No. 2081) is the original sketch for the Berlin picture.
In 1620, when Rubens undertook to paint a series of thirty-nine Miracles of SS. Ignatius Loyola and François Xavier for the ceiling of the Jesuit Church at Antwerp, the business-like organisation of his studio was an acknowledged fact, as may be gathered from the terms of the agreement which stipulated that the master himself should provide the designs, though the execution was to be entrusted to his most competent assistants. The actual paintings were destroyed by fire in 1718, but of the original sketches seventeen have been preserved, and are now distributed between the Louvre, the Vienna Academy, the Museums of Gotha and Brussels, and the Dulwich Gallery. The four in the La Caze collection at the Louvre are Abraham’s Sacrifice (No. 2120), Abraham and Melchisedek (No. 2121), The Elevation of the Cross (No. 2122), and The Coronation of the Virgin (No. 2123). The whole series, but especially the first two of these, is remarkable for the boldness of the foreshortening, calculated for the position of the panels on the ceiling, and for the swift bravura and inimitable expressiveness of the brushwork. To the same period belongs Philopœmen recognised by an Old Woman (No. 2124), which is essentially a brilliant still-life study for a lost picture.
THE MÉDICIS SERIES
We come now to the series of twenty-one large allegorical paintings, designed by Rubens and executed mostly by his pupils, from 1621 to 1625, for the decoration of the Luxembourg Palace for Marie de Médicis, whose by no means inspiring career had to furnish the subjects for the series. It was a thankless task which could only be accomplished by a tour de force—by removing the events of the queen’s life from actuality into the sphere of mythology and allegory. That the strange mingling of the real and the ideal should sometimes verge on the grotesque was almost inevitable—as inevitable as that the work of his assistants should have failed to do full justice to the master’s conception, even if it was “pulled together” by the easily recognisable touches added by Rubens to the finished panels. The florid exuberance of design and colour was entirely in keeping with the purpose and the surroundings for which the paintings were intended. It is impossible here to enter into a full description of this extensive series, or to define exactly Rubens’s share in each of the eleven pictures. We must confine ourselves to the brief enumeration of the subjects in the order in which they are now to be seen in the new Rubens Gallery. The series begins with The Fates spinning the Destiny of Marie de Médicis (No. 2085). Then follow The Triumph of Truth (No. 2105); Henri IV. receiving the Portrait of Marie (No. 2088); The Marriage of Marie by Procuration with Henri IV. (No. 2089); Marie landing at Marseilles, Nov. 3, 1600 (No. 2090); The Marriage at Lyons, Dec. 10, 1600 (No. 2091); The Birth of Louis XIII. at Fontainebleau, Sept. 27, 1601 (No. 2092); Henri IV. leaves for the War with Germany and entrusts the Government to the Queen (No. 2093, [Plate XXI.]); The Coronation of the Queen (No. 2094); Apotheosis of Henri IV. and the Queen’s Regency (No. 2095); The Queen’s Journey to Ponts-de-Cé (No. 2097); Exchange of the Two Princesses, Nov. 9, 1615 (No. 2098); The Prosperous Regency (No. 2099); The Majority of Louis XIII. (No. 2100); The Queen’s Nocturnal Flight from Blois (No. 2101); The Reconciliation of the Queen with her Son (No. 2102); The Conclusion of Peace (No. 2103); and Marie’s Interview with her Son (No. 2104). But The Birth of Marie de Médicis, at Florence, on April 26, 1575 (No. 2086); The Education of Marie by Minerva, Mercury, Apollo, and the Graces (No. 2087); and The Gods in Olympus protecting the Queen’s Government (No. 2096), which belong to the same series, have been placed in another room.
Of the first and the last paintings the Louvre owns the original sketch on one panel, by Rubens, for The Triumph of Truth and The Fates spinning the Destiny of Marie (No. 2110), the other preliminary sketches being at the Hermitage and the Munich Gallery. It is interesting to note that all these sketches are designed in a very light key, almost in grisaille, with touches of rose and other tender colour notes, so that apparently Rubens’s assistants were allowed great liberty in the matter of colour.
MÉDICIS PORTRAITS
Several other pictures by Rubens at the Louvre—all of them portraits—are more or less directly connected with the Médicis series, and were painted between 1621 and 1625. These are the Portrait of Anne of Austria (No. 2112), which was formerly known as Elizabeth of Bourbon; the Portrait of Francesco de’ Medici (No. 2106), Grand Duke of Tuscany, and father of Marie de Médicis, which was painted for the Luxembourg Gallery; the Portrait of Johanna of Austria (No. 2107), daughter of the Emperor Ferdinand, and wife of Francesco de’ Medici; the Portraits of Marie de Médicis (Nos. 2108 and 2109) (the former in the character of Bellona, and both studio works with the final touches added by the master); and the Portrait of Baron Henri de Vicq (No. 2111), who, as Flemish Ambassador to the French Court, was instrumental in procuring Rubens the important commission for the Luxembourg pictures. This admirable portrait was bought at the King of Holland’s sale in 1850 for £637.