Chapter I: Brussels--Antwerp (2)

The Museum in which a large collection of Rubens and Vandyke’s pictures are deposited is an ugly suite of rooms in an obscure corner, the building having been a suppressed convent. It is situated in a little garden, ornamented, or rather disfigured by some wretched statues, as if their worthlessness was meant to serve as a foil to the gems within doors. It is curious that that which ought to be a native collection does not contain a single piece of Teniers, except one wretched thing which it is libellous to ascribe to his pencil, and only two of Snyders. In England, where the best pictures of Rubens’ pencil are comparatively unknown, and where our countrymen are accustomed only to his allegorical subjects and ungraceful women, the homage rendered to his abilities is, I think, rather an echo of his continental fame than a genuine appreciation of his merits; but any one who wishes thoroughly to estimate his loftier pretensions, and ardently to admit his claims to admiration, should visit the Museum and the Cathedral of Antwerp. Here his pictures evince not power alone, not merely that wonder-creative imagination that peoples the canvass with the most masterly compositions, but they exhibit a sweet adherence to nature, a rich perception of beauty, and a magical command of expression and action, that makes the canvass record the event it commemorates like a page of history or the voice of a poet. It is impossible, for instance, to look at “the Descent from the Cross” without almost expecting the attitudes to change as the act proceeded, so eager and intent are the countenances of his figures, and so earnest and real their occupations; and in the same way in the picture of “_the Crucifixion_,” where the Centurion has already broken one of the legs of the malefactor on the left, who has torn it from the cross under the agony of the stroke, and the soldier has the iron raised to crush the other; one’s very flesh thrills in anticipation of the scream that seems about to issue from the excruciated lips of the sufferer. This is a marvellous picture in every respect, and certainly the pride of the Museum; each individual figure is a perfect episode--Christ himself, in all the dignified calm repose of recent death; the soldier, with his hand raised to pierce his side, whilst Mary Magdalene, who seems in a paroxysm of suffering, to have been clinging around the foot of the cross, springs forward in a sudden agony of terror, with her arms outstretched to intercept the spear. This head of the Magdalene, Sir Joshua Reynolds pronounces to be “the most beautiful profile he ever saw of Rubens or any other painter.” Finely contrasted with the stirring action of these figures, is the expression of the mother of Jesus, who appears stupified by the exhaustion of her very sufferings, and that of the good Centurion, who leans forward over the neck of his horse in evident sympathy and horror at the scene before him.

“_The Adoration of the Magi_” is another picture of Rubens, well known in England from its innumerable engravings. It is, however, in every respect inferior to the Crucifixion, though a superb picture. But there are two charming paintings, the insensible attraction of which is, perhaps, the sweet repose of the subject; one a Christ exhibiting his wounds to satisfy Thomas’s incredulity, and the other the Virgin instructing St. Anne. It is impossible for any creature to sit before these, and another exquisite little copy of “The Descent from the Cross,” and to retire from them unimbued with a veneration for the genius that could conceive and embody such imaginings. There are in all fifteen paintings of Rubens in this collection, and they are certainly triumphs of his easel; the gallery at Munich possesses no less than _ninety-five_ of his works, but after having seen both, I would rather have five of these at Antwerp than the ninety-five which are the boast of Bavaria.

There are five or six pictures by Vandyke, but they are in the same style with Rubens, groups from sacred subjects; and they do not bear to be placed in such immediate contact with the chefs-d’œuvres of his master. Vandyke’s unrivalled portraits, and his single figures are as much superior to those of Rubens, as the latter excels him in combination and compositions. Their productions are as an epic poem to a lyric or a sonnet; and whilst Rubens is the Homer of his art, Vandyke may be well contented to be its Pindar or Plutarch. The rest of the walls are occupied with the canvass of the other second rate names which have competed for fame with these great originals, Van Thulden, Seghers, Jordaens, de Vos, and a picture by Quellyn, which, I presume, to be the largest in the world upon canvass, as it occupies the entire end of the gallery, from the ground to the roof, and must be, at least, forty feet broad by sixty or seventy high. With the exception of Rubens and Vandyke, in fact, the collection is commonplace. In one of the halls is appropriately placed, as a relic of Rubens, the gilt leather chair which he occupied when president of the academy. Unfortunately it has not proved the tripod of the Pythoness to his successors.

I think it is Dr. Clarke who advises every traveller, who wishes speedily to map the spot in which he finds himself in his memory, to take the earliest opportunity of ascending the nearest tower or mountain, and I am most fully prepared to certify for its advantages. One half-hour on the tower of the Cathedral of Antwerp will give a stranger a better idea of its localities and extent, than a week’s driving around its streets and environs. The Cathedral itself is situated near the pretty little square called the _Place Vert_, (which was, I think, at one time a burying-place attached to the church). The building itself is defaced, as usual, by a number of ordinary houses erected against its walls, and which, of course, cover up all the exterior beauty of the architecture. It stands, tradition says, on a spot of ground which belonged to a monastery founded by Godfrey of Bouillon. The exquisite steeple, however, was built shortly before the reign of Charles V., (who stood as godfather to the great Bell,) from a design which originally contemplated two towers of equal grandeur and elegance, but one only was completed. The ascent is fatiguing in the extreme; and as the day was stormy, the vibrations of the tower were sensibly felt as the wind rushed through its beautiful galleries. Workmen have been employed for some years in restoring all the decayed portions of the stone-work, and the steeple is still filled with their scaffolding and machinery. But the view, long before gaining the extreme summit, is by far the finest in Belgium, extending, as it does, over the broad current of the Scheldt, whose windings can be traced from Ghent to Flushing, whilst to the north, the eye can reach Breda and the frontiers of Holland; to the south and east, the distant cities of Brussels, Mechlin, Turnhout, and Louvain. The vast extent of country which is swept by one of these Flemish prospects is really quite inconceivable, whilst the absence of a single hill to intercept the horizon upon either side, renders them as peculiar as they are surprising.

Over the grand doorway, as we enter below the tower, is a crucifix in bronze, which was cast from the fragments of a statue which the Duke of Alva erected to himself upon the Citadel, with the insulting motto on its pedestal “_ex ære captivo_,” in allusion to its being made out of the cannon, taken in his first successful battle against the Prince of Orange at Jeminghem, near Emden in 1568. This memorable statue gave origin to the distich,

Cur statuam vivo tibi Dux Albane dedisti?
An quia defuncto nemo daturus erat?

Requesens, the successor of Alva, in his anxiety to conciliate the people, took down this record of their sufferings, and concealed it, but being discovered by the citizens after the “Pacification of Ghent,” it was by them melted and applied to its present purpose.

Opposite the Cathedral, in the square, is a gothic screen of iron work, which covers a fountain; tradition says it was made by Quentyn Metsys, “the blacksmith of Antwerp,” an operative Cymon, who was converted into an artist by the charms of a Flemish Iphigenia, whose father consented to her marriage only when her lover had become a painter. An inscription on a stone, near the great door of the Cathedral, which enrols Metsys as a “pictor incomparabilis artis,” acknowledges the obligation of the arts to the attractions of his mistress.

“Connubialis amor de Mulcibre fecit Apellem.”

The body of the church within is of immense extent, so great, indeed, that our cicerone ventured to say it was five hundred feet in length, and half that in breadth at the transepts. The gothic arcades, which separate the nave from the side aisles are of prodigious height, and with the innumerable pillars that support the organ and surround the choir, the coup-d’œil, at entering, presents quite a forest of columns; “these, and the dim religious light,” falling upon the monuments around, from lofty windows emblazoned with armour, and the effigies of ancient ecclesiastics; and streaming downwards from the richly painted dome give an air of solemnity to the whole as striking, though by no means so magnificent, as Westminster Abbey. Before the period of the French revolution, and whilst Antwerp was still the seat of a bishopric, (it is now appended to the see of Malines), the Cathedral was one of the richest in Europe, abounding in altars of marble, candelabra of silver, paintings, statues, and jewels, which were all despoiled or destroyed by the followers of reason. Among them was an _ostensoir_ for holding the holy elements of the host, in massive gold, which had been a gift from Francis I. The treasury is still abundantly supplied with donations of a similar kind, though of less intrinsic cost perhaps, and its innumerable chapels, with their altarpieces and ornaments, its sumptuous choir, and astonishing carved pulpit by Verbruggen, covered with allegories and quaint devices, form a scene which is remarkably imposing.

The innumerable paintings which are hung in every space, might, elsewhere, receive a suitable homage of admiration, but here, eager expectation leads one only to the triumphs of Rubens. Rubens has four superb pieces here, “The Elevation of the Cross,” “_The Descent from the Cross_,” “The Resurrection,” which adorns the tomb of Moretus, the printer, and the “Assumption of the Virgin,” over the centre of the grand altar. I never saw a more striking illustration of the power of a picture, than the effect produced by the Descent from the Cross. It was closed by its two folding volets when we entered, the backs of which contain, likewise, two designs by Rubens, one of St. Cristopher, the patron saint of the guild of arquebusiers, for whom he painted the picture, and the other, of a hermit, neither of them of great merit. These engaged no attention, apparently, but when, bye and bye, the sacristan moved them to either side, and displayed the astonishing picture within, the effect was quite remarkable--the loungers and passers-by were now arrested, one by one, as they came within the circle of attraction, till a little crowd of peasants and soldiers were collected before it, in the most breathless attention, and, as if struck with a new sensation, I saw them look silently in each others’ faces, apparently to discover whether others felt as they did themselves. One girl, with a basket on her arm was caught at once, as she passed, and remained with the rest, quite abstracted in contemplation; it recalled Wordsworth’s exquisite description of the street musician by the Pantheon:--

What an eager assembly! what empire is this,
The weary have life and the hungry have bliss,
The mourner is cheered and the anxious have rest,
And the guilt-burthened soul is no longer oppress’d.

That errand-bound 'prentice was passing in haste--
What matter--he’s caught, and his time runs to waste;
The newsman is stopped, though he stops on the fret,
And the half-breathless lamp-lighter he’s in the net.

The porter sits down on the weight which he bore,
And the lass with her barrow wheels hither her store;
If a thief could be here, he might pilfer with ease,
_She sees the musician, ’tis all that she sees_!

The genuine admiration of this artless assemblage, was as marked a triumph to the genius of Rubens, as the pecking of the birds at his basket of fruit was to the execution of Apelles. I never saw such a rebuke to the “cant of criticism,” and I could not but feel it to be a compensation for the judgment of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who, I do not know why, professes to have been _disappointed_ with its excellence. The picture was painted for the corporation of gun-smiths, in order to compose a quarrel as to the ownership of a stripe of ground, on which they alleged that Rubens had encroached, in the erection of his house and gardens. Another story concerning it, is that the pupils of Rubens, in their romps during his absence, had thrown down one of their number, who in his fall, had rubbed out the arm of the beautiful Magdalene, and that, in order to restore it before the return of their master, they selected Vandyke, who repaired it with so much ability, that Rubens acknowledged its superiority to the original. The painting, like all the other treasures of Belgium, was one of the ornaments of the Louvre, during the reign of Napoleon.

_The tomb of Rubens_ is in a little chapel, consecrated especially to his family, in the Church of St. Jacques; it is situated immediately in the rear of the high altar and the choir. Its only ornament is an exquisite picture of a Holy Family, by “the illustrious dead,” in which he has introduced portraits of himself as Saint George, his two wives, Isabel Brandt and Helen Forman, as Martha and Mary, his father as St. Joseph, his grandfather as Time, and his child as a cherubim. In a vault beneath, is laid the

dust which is
Even in itself an immortality.

It is covered by a single slab of marble, with an inscription which records the talents and the learning of the Seigneur of Steen (Stein i toparcha), of whom it says, “_non sui tantum seculi, sed et omnis ævi Apelles dici meunt_. His genius,” it proceeds to say, “elevated him to the friendship and the confidence of kings and princes; so that when named a counsellor of state, by Philip IV, King of Spain and the Indies, and despatched as his ambassador to the court of England, he laid the basis of peace between his Sovereign and King Charles II. His family are now extinct, and this monument to his memory, which had long, as the inscription says, been neglected by his last descendants, was restored in 1775, by one who was then a canon of the cathedral, and who traced a relationship with the great painter in the maternal line, “_ex matre et avia nepos_.””

The church which contains this interesting tomb, is, in proportion to its extent, the most splendid in Antwerp. In its chapels there are some sculptures in marble, in alto-relievo, of surprisingly elaborate execution, and of merit sufficient to entitle them to a visit to Paris, which they, of course, made under the paternal government of the Emperor. Its walls are, also, covered by quantities of Flemish pictures of value, adorned with statues by Verbruggen, Willemsens and Quellyn.

At the entrance to the _Church of St. Paul_ is a “Calvary,” one of those exhibitions of the sufferings of Christ, that by the coarseness of their conception and their barbarous execution, create a feeling of disgust in any mind of intelligence or taste, and to the ignorant, whom they are intended to attract, must connect the solemn idea of the Saviour with the most coarse and revolting associations. It consists of a vast crowd of horrid-looking statues to represent the faithful priests, holy men, and prophets, surrounding a rock, out of and in which, a number of angels and saints are flying and walking; and below, a tomb, with the body of the Saviour on a bier--the whole surrounded by little holes and recesses, in which the wicked are represented, undergoing all the tortures of purgatory, in forms and attitudes as varied, at least, if not so poetical, as those of Dante. The interior of the church abounds, as usual, with statues and paintings, amongst which are some of Teniers and Vandyke, and the grand altar is decorated by a masterly statue of St. Paul from the chisel of Vanbruggen.

The congregation was assembled for vespers when we entered the Church of the Augustines to see Rubens’ picture of “The Marriage of St. Catherine.” It is quite opposed to all our protestant feelings of the decorum and reverence due to the solemnity of public worship, to see the indifference and almost rudeness with which the valets-de-place conduct their parties of sightseers around a church, regardless of its most impressive ceremonies, brushing past the altar in the full blaze of its panoply, and disturbing the devotions of all who may intercept their view of a picture. It was almost painful to listen to the “cant of criticism,” amidst the chanting of anthems, clouds of incense, and the solemn pealings of the organ, but it appeared to excite no such feeling in those around us. With us, however, in England, the outward solemnity of public worship is increased by the impression that it is the fervent and simultaneous out-pouring of the hearts of a whole united multitude; whilst in the Catholic churches, except in the few minutes occupied by the repetition of the mass, the act of worship is individual and apart, and performed almost by rote, at any hour of the day, from sunrise to evening. The parties, whom I shrunk from interrupting, as we slipped past their little _prie dieu_ chairs, seemed to feel nothing whatever at the intrusion, but raised their eyes for a moment from their missals, to take a view of the strangers and then returned to the point where they had left off. This apparent indifference, gives a bad impression of the reality of their devotions; but still it was not universal, and I have seen in the Roman Catholic churches, numbers whose whole soul seemed to be abstracted from all that was passing around them in the deep sincerity of their adorations.

In Antwerp, and, indeed, elsewhere, but here we remarked it particularly, the vast majority of the congregation were females, who invariably seem to be the most devout. I was particularly struck with a young mother, apparently a lady of rank, and of most interesting appearance, who walked up the aisle of the Augustines, holding two beautiful children by the hand, and kneeling between them before the high altar, repeated the vesper prayer along with them. The innocent fervour of the children, as with their little hands clasped and timid eyes, they looked upwards at the splendour of the altar, now lighted up for the evening ceremony, and the modest devotion of their gentle mother as she taught them to pray, was a more exquisite picture than all the gorgeous imaginings of Rubens, with which we had been enchanted in the morning.

It was dark ere we could complete our visit to the other churches of Antwerp, which here, as elsewhere, are the great depositories of the public treasures. We had light, however, to see the exquisite pulpit in the church of Saint Andrew. This is by far the noblest work of this kind that I have seen: it represents a boat drawn upon the sea shore, beneath a rock on which Christ stands, and calls to the fishermen Simon, Peter and Andrew, “follow me, and I will make you fishers of men; and straightway they left their nets and followed him.” Nothing could be more appropriate than the selection of this subject for such a purpose, and in the church of Saint Andrew too, and nothing of the kind can excel the extreme beauty of its execution. The figures, which are full of grace and expression, are by Van Geel,--and the other parts and minute details, are by Van Hoole, some of which, such as the fish and nets in the boat are as delicately finished as those of Grynlyn Gibbons. Against one of the gothic columns of this church, by the south transept, there is a small portrait and an obscure little monument in black and white marble to the memory of Queen Mary of Scotland, erected by two of her maids of honour, “præ-nobilis familiæ _Currell_,” who had attended her to the scaffold, and had then returned to the Low Countries. Its inscription records their indignation at her fate, “seeking refuge in England where her relative Elizabeth was Queen, she was, by the perfidy of the parliament and the heretics, held in captivity for nineteen years, and then had her head cut off for the good of religion. _Perfidia senat: et heret: post 19 captivit annos, relig: ergo caput obtruncata._”

We dined with M. David, a wealthy merchant, for whom we had brought a letter of introduction; and if his house is to be taken as a specimen of the rest, the merchants of Antwerp must indeed be “princes.” It occupied three sides of a large court-yard, with lofty staircases on either side of the porte-cochère, the rooms furnished with English carpets, and the walls, as usual, covered with some excellent pictures by native artists. It is singular, that the use of carpets should be so slow in making its way upon the continent; climate is not the cause, because in countries much colder than England, they equally reject them with the countries of the south. Independently of their comfortable enjoyment, they are as much a _picture_ on the floor as stucco work or frescoes are a picture for the ceiling. We seem to divide the two with our continental neighbours; with us the floors are richly decorated, and the ceilings forgotten, comparatively, whilst with them the ceiling is the great field for the display of taste, and the floors of ordinary houses are seldom more costly than earthen tiles or sanded fir. In their palaces, indeed, the idea of an English floor is adopted, but it is exhibited not in velvety carpets, but in the more expensive material of an inlaid _parquet_.

The Citadel of Antwerp is now little more than a patch of ground encompassed by the circuit of its fortified walls; the chapel and the interior buildings, which once occupied its centre, having been blown to dust by the bombardment in 1830. The accounts which an eye-witness gave us of some of the scenes of this siege, were an admirable illustration of the slight space that separates the ridiculous from the sublime. The sensible people of the city were, as I have before mentioned, dreadfully opposed to the revolution, and M. Rogier, and the other leaders of the “_patrioterie Brabançonne_,” having in vain essayed to persuade them that they were the most suffering population in Europe, were about to give them up as

Wretches no sense of wrongs could rouse to vengeance,
Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded,
Spiritless outcasts,

when the victorious republicans resolved to carry their arms to the gates of Antwerp, and achieve its regeneration by assault and storm. They accordingly invaded the city, seven thousand strong, and sent a summons to General Chassé to surrender. The general, who had resided for years in the city, was well aware of its loyalty, and had likewise been inspired by the Prince of Orange with a confident hope that the rebellion would yet be stayed without bloodshed. He looked on the martial display of the “liberators” only as a riot which might be quelled by the civil power, if it did not sooner expire of itself, and he advised the magistrates, as the best means to save the city from being destroyed by artillery, if he were compelled to repel them by force, to assent to their entrance within the gates, on an express understanding that they were not to approach the citadel, or molest the gun-boats in the river, and that they were merely to hold quiet possession of the town till the commandant should communicate with the Hague. To save the property within the walls from destruction, the magistrates complied, and opened a negociation with the commanders of the insurgent force. The mortifying degradation of this step, and the violence which it must have been to the feelings of men of loyalty and respectability, may easily be imagined when it is known who these commanders were. One was a Monsieur Mellinet, a French officer, who had been compelled to abscond in consequence of “a suspicion of debt” and a conviction of bigamy. Another was a M. Neillon, a Frenchman also and a private soldier, but since a _major-general_ in the Belgian service. He had a short time before been hissed off the stage at Antwerp, when an actor at the theatre there. Like General Vandamme, who, when a barber’s boy at Ghent, had been whipped and banished for thieving, and vowed never to return unless at the head of an army, _which he lived to accomplish_; M. Neillon is said to have launched a similar threat against the audience of Antwerp, which he too had, perhaps, sooner than he expected, the means of putting in execution. The third was a Monsieur Kepells, once an artillery man in the Dutch service, but whose chief occupation had been carrying the skeleton of a whale round the country, the same which was afterwards exhibited at Charing Cross in London, and from its huge dimensions acquired the title of “the Prince of Wales.” It was to these three eminent commanders, that the opulent merchants of Antwerp were now compelled to surrender quiet possession of their town. The negociation was concluded by them in utter ignorance, however, of the real strength of the insurgent army, but when the gate was thrown open, and the mob rushed into the city, the gentleman, who was my informant, and had been an eye-witness of their entry, declared that their appearance baffled all description. They poured like a torrent of mud through the gate, some with no shoes, some with but one, some without hats or head-covering of any kind, some few on horseback, others dragging along two field pieces with ropes, some with guns and swords, others with bludgeons, but the vast majority with no arms of any kind,

“Viribus confisus admirandisque lacertis!”

They instantly broke faith with the townspeople, denied the right of the magistrates to enter into any convention with the Dutch commandant, an alien and a foreigner; and proceeded forthwith to attack both the citadel and the gun-boats, in which they had an idea that there was money deposited, in direct violation of their specific stipulations. They assaulted the hospital attached to the citadel, killed some four-and-twenty poor invalids, and put the rest to flight over the back wall into the citadel, when old Chassé, reluctant to give credit to the probability of their perfidy, believed it to be some mistake, and gave them twenty minutes to retire. But instead of following his advice, they attacked the arsenal in search of arms, upon which Chassé fired a few guns from the ravelin in the hope of dispersing them, and finally hauling down the white flag, he opened the whole thunder of the citadel, the forts and the fleet in the harbour; he beat the arsenal to the ground in a few minutes, and setting fire to the great warehouses, known by the name of the _entrepôt_, which was stored full of merchandize--the whole were in a few hours reduced to ashes and ruin. In the meantime, the shot and shells which were falling in the town were playing havoc in all directions; the inhabitants fled in terror, or hid themselves in the cellars; the prison caught fire and disgorged its inmates, and the whole city seemed threatened with instant destruction; till the magistrates having succeeded in reaching the citadel, succeeded in appeasing the rage of the indignant commandant, and procured a renewal of the truce. What a picture of the leaders, the agents and the acts of a revolution!

The subsequent siege by the French in 1832, when the Dukes of Orleans and Nemours “fleshed their swords” against the Dutch, was something equally characteristic. It inflicted no injury or danger upon the town, being confined merely to the citadel and the trenches around it, and was rather regarded by the inhabitants as a kind of grand military drama, which was got up at the expense of Holland and France for their amusement. The French, in fact, did all in their power to contribute to its theatrical effect. They had not smelt powder since Waterloo, except across their own barricades, and they were impatient to make a grand display for the recovery of their reputation. The operations were conducted with all the pomp and paraphernalia of a parade, and the soldiers marched to work in the trenches with colours flying and trumpets sounding. In fact, so thoroughly melodramatic was the whole affair, that seats on all the elevated parts of the city were hired out to view it, and the roof of the theatre itself, being a suitable place, the play-bills announced, “_the public is informed that places may be procured at the Théâtre des Variétés for seeing the siege!_”

With the exception of its churches, Antwerp possesses no public buildings of any importance. The Hôtel de Ville was, at one time, a rival for any in the Netherlands, but it was burned by the mutinous Spaniards of the army of Requesens in the sixteenth century, and the present edifice has nothing very remarkable in its appearance. It is situated in a curious little antique square, surrounded by old Spanish houses, and amongst the rest, one in which Charles V was wont to lodge on the occasion of his visit to the city. The _Exchange_ is the model from which that of London was constructed, a square court-yard, surrounded by arcades with groined arches, and supported by truncated pillars in the Venetian style, with rudely sculptured capitals. The _Hanseatic House_ is another huge mercantile depôt which stands between the two basins of Napoleon. It is of vast dimensions and is visible from a considerable distance on all sides of Antwerp. In an old tower near the Marché de Poisson, we were told that there were still to be seen the dungeons which had been occupied by the Inquisition during the reign of the Duke of Alva and the “Council of Blood.”