The Pride Of Flanders

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

A story is told that the Dean of Malines Cathedral was furious when, having ordered a ‘Last Supper’ from Rubens, a young man named Justus van Egmont came down to begin the work. Later on

The great man appeared with his fine calm presence and the urbane manner that was a bulwark against offence or misappreciation. As Rubens corrected the work, enlivened the color or action of the figures, and swept the whole composition with his unerring brushwork towards a beautiful unity of effect, the churchman acknowledged the wisdom of the master, and admitted that the money of the chapter had been safely invested.

Even the beautiful portrait of ‘Susanne Fourment’, known as the ‘Chapeau de Poil,’ a canvas of 1620, which shows Rubens second manner merging into his third—in which the pigment is less solid and fusion of color more subtle—even this work has been thought by some critics to be not altogether the work of Rubens. The late R A M Stevenson considered that ‘the comparatively rude folds of the dress and the trivial details of the feather’ betrayed another hand at work.

The fame of the Flemish master had spread all over Europe, and in January 1622 Rubens was summoned to Paris by the Queen Mother, Marie dé Medici, who wished him to decorate her favorite Luxembourg Palace. ‘The great series of wall paintings, which were the result of this commission, are now one of the glories of the Louvre. These pictures were designed to emphasize the greatness of the Medicis and the splendor resulting from the marriage of Marie dé Medici to King Henri IV of France. How cleverly Rubens fulfilled his double role of courtier and decorator may be seen in ‘Henri IV Receiving the Portrait of Marie dé Medici.’ Here, in a wonderful blending of fable with reality, the artist idealizes the King as monarch and lover, and turns a marriage dictated by reasons of state into a romantic love-match in which Cupid and all the deities of Olympus are deeply concerned.

Endowed by nature with a splendid presence, tactful in disposition and charming in manners, Rubens was a man to win the confidence of any Court. After the death of the Archduke Albert in 1621, his widow the Regent Isabella took Rubens into her inner counsels and employed him in semi-official visits to foreign courts. The great object of the rulers of Flanders was to keep England and Holland friendly with Spain and apart from France. One of the first missions which Rubens received was to secure a renewal of the treaty between Holland and Flanders, a task which took him to The Hague in 1623. It was at this time that he was ennobled by the King of Spain.

When visiting Paris the painter had made the acquaintance of the Duke of Buckingham, the virtual ruler of England under Charles I, and this nobleman had been greatly taken by the talents of the Fleming both as artist and diplomatist. It was Buckingham himself who suggested that Rubens should be sent to Spain in the summer of 1628 to ascertain the real feelings of Philip IV in the war which Buckingham planned against France through hatred of Richelieu, who had separated him from Anne of Austria.

Rubens arrived at Madrid in the course of the summer, bringing with him eight pictures as a present to Philip; but the assassination of Buckingham on September 2nd, 1628, changed the political aspect of affairs and enabled Rubens to give his whole attention to art. An important event in the history of painting was the meeting in Spain of Rubens, now fifty two, with Velazquez, then a man of thirty; the two became great friends, that the younger man was considerably influenced by his elder.

Politically the great result of the Fleming’s stay in Spain was that Philip IV consented to Rubens going as his official representative to King Charles I of England. The artist-diplomat arrived in London on May 25, 1629, and not only arranged the terms of peace between England and Spain but gave a new direction to English painting. Charles commissioned him to paint the ceiling which may still be seen in the Banqueting Saloon in Whitehall, now the United Services Museum, and many of his pictures were bought by the Royal Family and nobility of England.

The Pride Of Flanders (continued)