Although of humble descent,—his father was a druggist, —John Rubens was a man of learning. He had studied law at home and abroad, and became councillor and alderman in his native town (1562). A Catholic by birth, it was not long before he became, like many of his countrymen, a zealous upholder of the Reformation, and we even find him spoken of by a contemporary as “le plus docte Calviniste qui fust pour lors au Bas Pays.” After the plundering of the Antwerp churches in 1566, the magistrates were called upon for a justification. While openly they declared themselves devoted sons of the church, a list of the followers of the Reformed creed, headed by the name of Anthony Van Stralen, the burgomaster, got into the hands of the duke of Alva. This was a sentence of death for the magistrates, and John Rubens lost no time in quitting Spanish soil, ultimately settling at Cologne (October 1568), with lιis wife and four children.

In his new residence he became legal adviser to Anne of Saxony, the second wife of the prince of Orange, William the Silent. Before long it was discovered that their relations were not purely of a business kind. Thrown into the dungeons of Dillenburg, Rubens lingered there for many months, his wife, Maria Pypelincx, never relaxing her endeavours to get the undutiful husband restored to freedom. Two years elapsed before the prisoner was released, and then only to be confined to the small town of Siegen. Here he lived with his family, from 1573 to 1578, and here most probably Maria Pypelincx gave birth to Philip, afterwards town-clerk of Antwerp, and Peter Paul. A year after (May 1578) the Antwerp lawyer got leave to return to Cologne, where he died on the 18th of March 1587, after having, it is said, returned to Catholicism. As there are at Siegen no records going back to the 16th century, the facts relating to the birth of Peter Paul Rubens must, of course, remain conjectural, but his mother certainly was at Siegen a few days before his birth, for we find her there, petitioning in favour of John Rubens, on June 14, 1577.

Rubens went to Antwerp with his mother when he was scarcely ten years of age, and made good progress in his classical studies, which he had begun with the Jesuits at Cologne. An excellent Latin scholar, he was also proficient in French, Italian, English, German, and Dutch. Part of his boyhood he spent as a page in the household of the countess of Lalaing, in Brussels; but, tradition adds, and we may well believe, the youth’s disposition was such as to induce his mother to allow him to follow his proper vocation, choosing as his master Tobias Verhaecht, who was in some way connected with the family. Not the slightest trace of this first master’s influence can be detected in Rubens’s works. Not so with Adam Van Noort, to whom the young man was next apprenticed. Van Noort, whose aspect of energy is well known through Van Dyck’s beautiful etching, was the highly esteemed master of numerous painters,—among them Van Balen, Sebastian Vrancx, and Jordaens, later his son-in-law. His pictures are almost exclusively to be found in Antwerp churches.

Rubens remained with Van Noort for the usual period of four years, thereafter studying under Otto Voenius or Van Veen, a gentleman by birth, a most distinguished Latin scholar, and a painter of very high repute. He was a native of Leyden, and only recently settled in Antwerp, but the town gave him numerous commissions of importance. Though Rubens never adopted his style of painting, the tastes of master and pupil had much in common, and some pictures by Otto Voenius can be pointed out as having inspired Rubens at a more advanced period. For example, the Magdalene anointing Christ’s Feet, painted for the cathedral at Malaga, and now at the Hermitage in St Petersburg, closely resembles in composition the very important work of Otto Voenius in the church at Bergues near Dunkirk.

In 1598, Adam Van Noort acting as dean of the Antwerp guild of painters, Rubens was officially recognized as “master,”—that is, was allowed to work independently and receive pupils. We have no means of forming an idea of his style at this early period, two years before his journey to Italy, but even the somewhat later works found at Genoa, Mantua, and Rome differ considerably from what may be termed the Rubenesque.

From 1600 to the latter part of 1608 Rubens belonged to the household of Vincenzo Gonzaga, duke of Mantua. Few princes in Italy surpassed the Gonzagas in splendour. For them Mantegna, Giulio Romano, Titian, and Prima-ticcio had produced some of their most admired works, and their now deserted palaces still bear traces of the richest decoration. To the Mantuan collection the Pitti palace, the Louvre, and the royal galleries of England owe some of their noblest specimens of Italian art. How Rubens came to be engaged at Mantua has not been explained. The duke, it is known, spent some time at Venice in July 1600, and is supposed there to have met his future painter, but it is also to be remembered that another Fleming, Francis Pourbus the younger, was at the time employed by him in taking the likeness of the prettiest women of the day; and Rubens, much against his will, was also, at first, it seems, intrusted with a similar task. The influence of the master’s stay at Mantua was of extreme importance, and cannot be too constantly kept in view in the study of his later works.

Sent to Rome in 1601, to take copies from Raphael for his master, he was also commissioned to paint several pictures for the church of Santa Croce, by the archduke Albert of Austria, sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands, and once, when he was a cardinal, the titular of that see. A copy of Mercury and Psyche after Raphael is preserved in the museum at Pesth. The religious paintings—the Invention of the Cross, the Crowning with Thorns, and the Crucifixion—are to be found in the hospital at Grasse in Provence.

At the beginning of 1603 “The Fleming,” as he was termed at Mantua, was sent to Spain with a variety of presents for Philip III. and his minister the duke of Lerma, and thus had opportunity to spend a whole year at Madrid and become acquainted with some of Titian’s masterpieces. Two of his own works, known to belong to the same period, are in the Madrid Gallery, Heraclitus and Democritus. Of Rubens’s abilities so far back as 1604 we get a more complete idea from an immense picture now in the Antwerp Gallery, the Baptism of Our Lord, originally painted for the Jesuits at Mantua. Here it may be seen to what degree Italian surroundings had influenced the painter of Vincenzo Gonzaga. Vigorous to the extreme in design, he reminds us of Michelangelo as much as any of the degenerate masters of the Roman school, while in decorative skill he seems to be descended from Titian and in colouring from Giulio Romano. Equally with this picture the Transfiguration, now in the museum at Nancy, and the portraits of Vincenzo and his consort, kneeling before the Trinity, in the library at Mantua, claim a large share of attention, apart from the interest awakened by the name of their author.

Two years later we meet a very large altarpiece of the Circumcision at St Ambrogio at Genoa, the Virgin in a glory of Angels, and two groups of Saints, painted on the wall, at both sides of the high altar in the church of Santa Maria in Valicella, in Rome. Undoubtedly these works give an impression of grandeur and effectiveness, but, in the immediate vicinity of the finest productions of the Italian school, they rank higher as documentary evidence than in intrinsic value, and remind us of a saying of Baglione, who was acquainted with Rubens in Italy, “Apprese egli buon gusto, e diede in una maniera buona ItaIiana.”

While employed at Rome in 1608, Rubens received most alarming news as to the state of his mother’s health. The duke of Gonzaga was then absent from Italy, but the dutiful son, without awaiting his return, at once set out for the Netherlands, though with the full intention of shortly resuming his post at court, as we gather from a letter to Annibale Chieppio, the Mantuan minister. When he arrived in Antwerp, Maria Pypelincx was no more. However strong his wish might now be to return to Italy, his purpose was overruled by the express desire of his sovereigns, Albert and Isabella, to see him take up a permanent residence in the Belgian provinces. Scarcely a year before, the archduke had unsuccessfully attempted to free the painter from his engagement at Mantua, and he could not fail to take advantage of the opportunity now presented for the fulfilment of his wishes. On August 3, 1609, Rubens was named painter in ordinary to their Highnesses, with a salary of 500 livres, and “the rights, honours, privileges, exemptions,” &c., belonging to persons of the royal household, not to speak of the gift of a gold chain. Not least in importance for the painter was his complete exemption from all the regulations of the guild of St Luke, entitling him to engage any scholars or fellow-workers, without being obliged to have them enrolled,—a favour, it must be added, which has been the source of considerable trouble to the historians of Flemish art.

Although so recently returned to his native land, Rubens seems to have been, with one accord, accepted by his countrymen as the head of their school, and the municipality was foremost in giving him the means of proving his acquirements. The first in date among the numerous repetitions of the Adoration of the Magi is a picture in the Madrid Gallery, measuring 12 feet by 17, and containing no fewer than eight-and-twenty life size figures, many in gorgeous attire, warriors in steel armour, horsemen, slaves, camels, <fcc. This picture, painted in Antwerp, at the town’s expense in 1609, had scarcely remained three years in the town-hall when it went to Spain as a present to Don Rodrigo Calderon, count of Oliva. The painter has represented himself among the horsemen, bareheaded, and wearing his gold chain. Cumberland speaks of this picture as the standard work of its author, and certainly it was well calculated to bring Rubens to the front rank in his profession. From a Ietterwritten in May 1611 we know that more than a hundred young men were desirous to become his pupils, and that many had, “for several years,” been waiting with other masters, until he could admit them to his studio. It was thus from the beginning regarded as a great favour to be admitted a pupil of Rubens.

Apart from the success of his works, another powerful motive had helped to detain the master in Antwerp,—his marriage with Isabella Brant (October 1609). Many pictures have made us familiar with the graceful young woman who was for seventeen years to share the master’s destinies. We meet her at The Hague, St Petersburg, Florence, at Grosvenor House, but more especially at Munich, where Rubens and his wife are depicted at full length on the same canvass. “His wife is very handsome,” observes Sir Joshua Reynolds, “and has an agreeable countenance;” but the picture, he adds, “is rather hard in manner.” This, it must be noted, is the case with all those pictures known to have immediately followed Rubens’s return, when he was still dependent on the assistance of painters trained by others than himself. Even in the Raising of the Cross, now in the Antwerp cathedral, and painted for the church of St Walburg in 1610, the dryness in outline is very striking.

According to the taste still at that time prevailing, the picture is tripartite, but the wings only serve to develop the central composition, and add to the general effect. In Witdoeck’s beautiful engraving the partitions even disappear. Thus, from the first, we see Rubens quite determined upon having his own way, and it is recorded that, when he painted the Descent from the Cross, St Christopher, the subject chosen by the Arquebusiers, was altered so as to bring the artistic expressions into better accordance with his views. Although the subject was frequently repeated by the great painter, this first Descent from the Cross has not ceased to be looked upon as his masterpiece. Begun in 1611, the celebrated work was placed in 1614, and certainly no more striking evidence could be given of the rapid growth of the author’s abilities. Rubens received 2400 florins for this picture.

Although it is chance that has brought the Raising of the Cross and the Descent from the Cross into their present close juxtaposition, it is not improbable that their uniformity in size may have been designed. In many respects, Italian influence remains conspicuous in the Descent. Rubens had seen Ricciarelli’s fresco at the Trinita de’ Monti, and was also acquainted with the grandiose picture of Baroccio in the cathedral of Perugia, and no one conversant with these works can mistake their influence. But in Rubens strength of personality could not be overpowered by reminiscence; and in type, as well as in colouring, the Descent from the Cross may be termed thoroughly Flemish and Rubenesque. As Waagen justly observes: “the boldness of the composition, the energy in the characters, the striking attitudes, and the effects of the grouping, together with the glowing vigorous colouring, belong to his later style, whereas a few of the heads, particularly that of the Virgin, display the careful execution of his earlier period. The interior of the wings, on which are painted the Visitation and the Presentation in the Temple, exhibit, on the other hand, a greater resemblance to the conjugal picture already alluded to, owing to a certain repose in action, a more elevated expression of delicacy and feeling in the characters, and a less glowing though still admirable colouring.”

Legend, in some way, connects Van Dyck with the Descent from the Cross, and ascribes to the great portrait painter an arm and shoulder of Mary Magdalene, which had been damaged by a pupil’s carelessness. Plain truth here, once more, seems to contradict romance. Van Dyck was a pupil of Van Balen’s in 1609, and most probably remained with him several years before coming to Rubens.

If Sir Dudley Carleton could speak of Antwerp in 1616 as “Magna civitas, magna solitudo,” there was no place period, of the existence of such a portrait.” While in England, Rubens very narrowly escaped drowning while going to Greenwich in a boat. The fact is reported by Lord Dorchester in a letter to Sir Isaac Wake (Sainsbury, cxvi.). At the beginning of March the painter’s mission came to a close.

Rubens was now fifty-three years of age; he had been four years a widower, and before the end of the year (December 1630) he entered into a second marriage with the beautiful girl of sixteen, named Helena Fourment, with whom his pictures have made the world so well acquainted. More than twenty portraits of her are described by Smith, and she also figures in perhaps twice as many of the master’s creations. Whether Rubens was more powerfully led in the choice of his second wife by her personal beauty or by the strength of a certain resemblance to his feminine ideal is questionable. Anyhow, she was an admirable model, and none of her husband’s works may be more justly termed masterpieces than those in which she is represented (Munich, St Petersburg, Blenheim, Liechtenstein, the Louvre, &c.).

Although the long months of absence could not be termed blanks in Rubens’s artistic career, his return was followed by an almost incredible activity. Inspired more than ever by the glorious works of Titian, he now produced some of his best creations. Brightness in colouring, breadth of touch and pictorial conception, are specially striking in those works we know to have been painted in the latter part of his lifetime. Could anything give a higher degree of Rubens’s genius than, for example, the Feast of Venus, the portrait of Helena Fourment ready to enter the bath, or the St Ildefonso. This last picture— now, as well as the two others just alluded to, in the Vienna Gallery—was painted for the church of the convent of St Jacques, in Brussels. On the wings are represented the archdukes in royal attire, under the protection of their patron saints. The presence of these figures has led to some mistake regarding the date of the production, but it has been proved beyond doubt, through a document published by Mr Castan (1884), that the St Ildefonso belongs to the series of works executed after the journeys to Spain and England. Archduke Albert had been dead ten years. The picture was engraved by Witdoeck in 1638.

Isabella died in 1633, and we know that to the end Rubens remained in high favour with her, alike as an artist and as a political agent. The painter was even one of the gentlemen she deputed to meet Mary de’ Medici at the frontier in 1631, after her escape from France.

Spain and the Netherlands went to war again, the king never ceasing to look upon the Dutch as rebels. The subject need not be dwelt upon; suffice it to say that much useless trouble and suspicion came upon the great artist. As to the real nature of his communings with Frederick Henry of Orange, whom he is known to have interviewed, nothing as yet has been discovered.

Ferdinand of Austria, the cardinal-infant of Spain, was called to the government of the Netherlands on the death of his aunt. He was the king’s younger brother, and arrived at Antwerp in May 1635. The streets had been decorated with triumphal arches and “spectacula,” arranged by Rubens, and certainly never equalled by any other works of the kind. Several of the paintings detached from the arches were offered as presents to the new governor-general, a scarcely known fact, which accounts for the presence of many of these works in public galleries (Vienna, Dresden, Brussels, &c.). Rubens was at the time laid up with gout, but Prince Ferdinand was desirous of expressing his satisfaction, and called upon the painter, remaining a long time at his house. Rubens and Ferdinand had met at Madrid, and only a short time elapsed before the painter was confirmed in his official standing,—a matter of small importance, if we consider that the last years of his life were almost exclusively employed in working much more for the king than for his brother. About a hundred and twenty paintings of considerable size left Antwerp for Madrid in 1637, 1638, and 1639; they were intended to decorate the pavilion erected at the Pardo, and known under the name of Torre de la Parada. Another series had been begun, when Ferdinand wrote to Madrid that the painter was no more, and Jordaens would finish the work. Rubens breathed his last on the 30th of May 1640.

More fortunate than many artists, Rubens left the world in the midst of his glory. Not the remotest trace of approaching old age, not the slighest failing of mind or skill, can be detected even in his latest works, such as the Martyrdom of St Peter at Cologne, the Martyrdom of St Thomas at Prague, or the Judgment of Paris at Madrid, where his young wife appears for the last time. “She is the handsomest person in Antwerp,” writes Ferdinand to his brother, in announcing the completion of what he terms ‘ ‘ the best painting Rubens has done.”

If Rubens was something of a diplomatist, it cannot be denied that alike in body as in mind he is portrayed in his own works with the utmost straightforwardness. His productions are what they are, as if they could not have been otherwise, and the fact is that, in reply to any observations he may...