Chapter L: Costa F (2)

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.

To the same period belongs the beautiful _Portrait of Susanne Fourment_ (Rubens’s handsome, large-eyed sister-in-law, whose features are best known from the _Chapeau de Paille_ at the National Gallery), which is still officially catalogued as _Portrait of a Lady of the Boonen Family_ (No. 2114); and the important composition _Lot’s Flight from Sodom_ (No. 2075), which bears the rare full signature and date

PE.-PA.-RUBENS FE, Aᵒ 1625,

to prove the master’s satisfaction with his own handiwork. It is a design of carefully studied rhythm, dramatic expressiveness, and subtly harmonised colour, carried out with the swift sureness of his later work.

In 1627, a year before his mission to Spain on behalf of the Infanta Isabella, widow of the Archduke Albrecht, Rubens designed for his patroness an important series of tapestries, which were, as was his wont at that period, sketched out by him, executed by his assistants, and touched up by his own hand. The tapestries were subsequently presented by the Infanta to a convent at Madrid; some of the paintings for them perished by fire, others were preserved at the Convent of Loeches, near Madrid. Two of these, _The Prophet Elijah in the Desert_ (No. 2076) and _The Triumph of Religion_ (No. 2083), were part of General Sebastiani’s loot from Spain, and were bought by the Louvre for £2400; whilst four others, now at Grosvenor House, were bought by the Marquis of Westminster for £10,500. Of about the same date is the brilliant _Adoration of the Magi_ (No. 2077), with its Titianesque scheme of strong red, blue, and golden yellow, of which a replica is in an Irish private collection.

(1577-1640)

FLEMISH SCHOOL

No. 2093.—HENRI IV. LEAVES FOR THE WAR WITH GERMANY, AND ENTRUSTS THE
GOVERNMENT TO THE QUEEN

(Henri IV. part pour la guerre d’Allemagne et confie à la reine le
gouvernement du royaume, 1610)

The King, attended by warriors and holding the banner of France,
prepares to leave the country to make war against Germany; he hands
the Globe, the emblem of State, to Marie de Médicis; the Queen
gives her hand to the little Dauphin, who later became King under
the title of Louis XIII.

Painted in oil on canvas.

12 ft. 11 in. × 11 ft. 4 in. (3·94 × 2·95.)]

LATE WORKS BY RUBENS

The closing decade of Rubens’s life is represented by five pictures of considerable importance. Of _Queen Tomyris with the Head of Cyrus_ (No. 2084) there is an earlier, large, and deservedly famous version in Lord Darnley’s collection; but the Louvre picture exceeds it in beauty of design and in unity of colour. It was painted about the same time (_cca._ 1632) as _Religion crowned by a Genius_ (No. 2126), one of the sketches for the ceiling at Whitehall. Of peculiar interest, owing to its unfinished state which reveals the master’s method of portraiture, is the superb portrait group of _Hélène Fourment, the Artist’s Second Wife, and Two of her Children_ (No. 2113, Plate XXII.). Only the heads, which are remarkable for an intensity of expression that is rarely to be found in Rubens’s paintings, are finished. All the rest is loosely and thinly sketched in sepia heightened with swift touches of brighter colour. It was painted about 1636, which is also the approximate date of _A Flemish Kermesse_ (No. 2115), an almost unique instance of the master applying the exuberant energy of his magic brush to a subject in which the expression of intense vitality and full-blooded sensuousness assumes the aspect almost of bestiality—which, however, in no way detracts from the artistic value of the painting. To turn from this to _A Joust by the Moat of a Castle_ (No. 2116) is to pass from coarse realism to pure romanticism, inspired probably by the associations of the picturesque Castle of Steen, which Rubens had bought in 1635, and which forms the setting for this scene of knightly prowess. This, and the marvellous and strangely modern little _Landscape_ (No. 2117), in which the morning sun is seen rising from the autumnal mist, belong to the closing years of Rubens’s life. He died at Antwerp on May 20, 1640.

ANTHONY VAN DYCK

Born at Antwerp in 1599, Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), after having worked a few years under Hendrick van Balen, entered Rubens’s studio in 1615, and soon became so conversant with the method of his famous master, that he was at an early age entrusted with the execution of important designs. Before he had reached his twentieth year he was a member of the Guild of St. Luke, and had acquired a reputation second only to that of Rubens himself. The _Portraits of Jean Grusset Richardot, President of the Netherlands Council, and his Son_ (No. 1985), which was bought in 1784 for 16,001 _livres_, so closely resembles the work of Rubens, especially in the brilliant flesh-painting, that the picture—a posthumous portrait, by the way—for a long time passed under the elder master’s name, although it is now admitted by the best authorities to be an early picture by Van Dyck.

Van Dyck paid a short visit to England in 1620. He went to Italy in the following year, studying the works of the great masters, and especially of Titian, and finally settling in Genoa, where he remained until his return to Antwerp in 1628. During these years he devoted himself almost exclusively to portraiture, in which he endeavoured successfully to emulate the golden warmth of colour which had drawn him towards Titian. Unfortunately this, to some the most attractive, phase of Van Dyck’s art is but indifferently shown at the Louvre, the only example being a _Portrait of a Man_ (No. 1976).

(1577-1640)

FLEMISH SCHOOL

No. 2113.—PORTRAIT OF HÉLÈNE FOURMENT, THE ARTIST’S SECOND WIFE,
AND TWO OF HER CHILDREN

(Portrait d’Hélène Fourment, seconde femme de Rubens, et de
ses enfants)

The artist’s second wife, wearing a felt hat trimmed with feathers,
is seated in an arm-chair, and turned three-quarters to the left;
on her lap is her little son, François; on the left her daughter,
Claire-Jeanne, dressed in brown, plays with her white pinafore.

Painted in oil on panel. The picture is unfinished.

5 ft. 8¾ in. × 2 ft. 8½ in. (1·13 × 0·82.)]

VAN DYCK’S SECOND ANTWERP PERIOD

Some of the master’s most precious works at the Louvre belong to his second Antwerp period, which extended from his return from Genoa in 1628 to his departure for England in 1632. It was probably then that he painted _The Virgin and Child, with the Penitent Sinners_ (No. 1961) (Mary Magdalen, David, and the Prodigal Son), in which the influence of the Venetian colourists is so clearly to be noticed. Indeed, the bosom of the female penitent is copied from the nymph in Titian’s _Education of Cupid_ at the Borghese Gallery, of which there is a drawing in the Chatsworth Sketch-book with the comment in the artist’s handwriting, “_quel admirabil petto_.” Shortly after his return from Italy he also painted _The Virgin and Child with Donors_ (No. 1962), one of his greatest masterpieces. The Madonna is of a youthful, pure type, vastly different from the buxom Flemish women so often depicted by his master in saintly characters. The painting of the Infant’s body is as admirable as that of the kneeling Donors, and a spiritual connection is established by the action of the Child and the expression of the man towards whom He is holding out His hand.

The companion groups _A Gentleman and a Child_ (No. 1973) and _A Lady and her Daughter_ (No. 1974), date from about 1630. They are full of that aristocratic distinction which is the hall-mark of Van Dyck’s Genoese portraits, and which in his later English period was apt to degenerate into effeminacy. This air of distinction is also to be noted in the children, although they are perfectly natural in action and expression, and have none of that stiffness which makes so many of the earlier masters’ portraits of children look like undergrown men and women. The imposing equestrian portrait of _Francisco d’Aytona, Marqués de Moncada_ (No. 1971), Generalissimus of the Spanish troops in the Netherlands, which in its general disposition recalls the portrait of Charles I. at Windsor Castle; the small study for it of the same sitter’s head and shoulders (No. 1972); and the portrait of _The Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, Regent of the Netherlands_ (No. 1970), in the costume of the Sisters of St. Clare, whom she had joined after the death of her husband the Archduke Albrecht, belong to the same period. Then also was painted the _Rinaldo in the Garden of Armida_ (No. 1966), which is probably the picture bought from the artist at Antwerp by Endymion Porter, on behalf of King Charles I., in March 1629, for the price of £78.

“LE ROI À LA CHASSE”

Van Dyck’s manner of life in England, as the petted Court painter of Charles I., and the factory-like output of his well-organised studio at Blackfriars, are too well known to need further comment. In justice to his fair fame it is necessary to draw a clear distinction between the innumerable replicas turned out by his assistants under his guidance, and such magnificent original works from the master’s own brush as the glorious _Portrait of King Charles I. of England_ (No. 1967, Plate XXIII.), known as “_Le Roi à la Chasse_,” which is one of the proudest possessions of the French national collection. The king is seen, resting his gloved hand on a stick, in a glade, with the sea in the distance. Behind him are two attendants and his white charger pawing the ground in impatient action. The king’s noble, quiet dignity is such as to dominate the entire composition, without, however, the slightest hint of the theatrical. Here, as in most of his English portraits, Van Dyck has departed from the glowing sumptuousness of his earlier Venetian palette, and arrived at a cooler, mellow, and more personal harmony of decorative colour. As if conscious of the superior merit of this picture, which is more than a mere portrait of the king, and depicts the very personification of royalty, the artist, who was not in the habit of signing his pictures, inscribed on a stone the lettering

CAROLUS I REX MAGNÆ BRITANNIÆ · VAN DIICK F.

Painted for the king in 1635 for £100, it passed through many hands before it was bought by Louis XV. for Mme du Barry, by whom it was ceded in 1775 to his successor for 24,000 _livres_.

(1599-1641)

FLEMISH SCHOOL

No. 1967.—PORTRAIT OF KING CHARLES I. OF ENGLAND

(Portrait de Charles Iᵉʳ, roi d’Angleterre (1600-1649))

The King, wearing a white satin coat, red riding-breeches, boots,
spurs, and a large felt hat, stands proudly forward towards the
left of the composition; his right hand rests on his stick, his
left is placed on his hip. The Marquess of Hamilton, in attendance
on the King, grasps the bridle of the charger; in the landscape
background is a page.

Painted in oil on canvas.

Signed on a stone in the right foreground:—

“CAROLUS I REX MAGNÆ BRITANNIÆ.
VAN DIICK F.”

8 ft. 11½ in × 7 ft. (2·72 × 2·12.)]

To Van Dyck’s English period, which only terminated with his death in 1641, belong the group of _Charles Louis, Elector Palatine, and Rupert, Prince of Bavaria_ (No. 1969), and the _Portrait of James Stuart, Duke of Lennox_ (No. 1975)—not the _Duke of Richmond_, as stated in the official Catalogue—in the character of Paris. Another twelve pictures are catalogued under Van Dyck’s name, but they are either of minor importance, or, like the _Three Children of Charles I._ (No. 1968), mere studio repetitions.

FRANS SNYDERS

The powerful personality of Rubens dominated the art of Flanders during the seventeenth century. His direct or indirect influence is traceable in the art of most of his contemporaries and of the painters of the next generation, who divided his artistic heritage without attaining to his universality. Thus his collaborator Frans Snyders (1579-1657), after studying under “Hell Brueghel” and H. van Balen, acquired the bravura of his brushwork and his unrivalled skill in depicting animals in violent movement from Rubens, in whose pictures of the chase he frequently painted the animals, whilst he often had to seek the assistance of other painters for the figures introduced into his own compositions. Among the thirteen pictures from his brush at the Louvre (Nos. 2141-2153) the _Wild Boar Hunt_ (No. 2144) serves best to illustrate Snyders’s power to suggest the furious onrush and wild excitement of the chase. His skill as a still-life painter may be judged from the masterly treatment of the wet glittering fish in the large _Fish Merchants_ (No. 2145).

JACOB JORDAENS

Whatever appears coarse in the art of Rubens is accentuated to the point of grossness in the paintings by his fellow-student under Van Noort, Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678). He is the painter of _Le Roi boit_ (No. 2014) or _The Twelfth Night Feast_, which is by no means the best of his many versions of his favourite subject. He was a realist who, as may be seen from this picture and from the _Concert after a Meal_ (No. 2015), found his most congenial subjects in the carousals of Flemish merrymakers, which he depicted with more than a touch of coarse humour. That his temperament and limitations debarred him from achieving success in the higher flights of art is clearly shown by his large but by no means noble canvas _Christ driving the Moneylenders from the Temple_ (No. 2011). On the other hand, his firm grasp of character stood him in good stead in portraiture. The so-called _Portrait of Admiral de Ruyter_ (No. 2016), which was bought in 1824 for £800, is a good example.

We can only briefly refer to a number of seventeenth-century Antwerp painters, who were either pupils of Rubens or close followers of his tradition. Gonzales Coques (1614-1684), the painter of the admirably lighted _Family Party_ (No. 1952), was essentially a portrait painter who became known as “the little Van Dyck,” although his manner had more in common with that of the Dutch “small masters” than with the tempered elegance of Charles I.’s Court-painter.

FOLLOWERS OF RUBENS

Gaspar de Crayer (1584-1669), a pupil of Raphael van Coxie, modelled his art entirely on Rubens, and was equally successful as a portrait painter and in his religious compositions. Both phases of his art figure in the Louvre collection, which owns the _St. Augustin in Ecstasy_ (No. 1953) and the life-size _Equestrian Portrait of the Infante Ferdinand, Governor of the Netherlands_ (No. 1954). It was a portrait of the same sitter that led to Crayer’s appointment to the position of Painter to the Infante’s Court, accompanied by considerable emoluments.

Abraham van Diepenbeeck (1596-1675), Pieter van Mol (1599-1650), and Paul de Vos (1593-1676) need not here detain us. They are all capable followers of their master’s style, without any personal distinction. David Ryckaert (1612-1661), the third of four artists of the same family that bore this name, is outside the immediate circle of Rubens. His _Interior of a Studio_ (No. 2137), which bears the signature “D. RYC. f. 1638,” is of peculiar interest as a document illustrating the _milieu_ in which a Flemish artist of that period lived and worked.

Gerard Seghers (1591-1651), the painter of _St. Francis in Ecstasy_ (No. 2140), although a pupil of Van Balen and Abraham Janssens, and indirectly, through Manfredi, of Caravaggio, must be counted among those who were influenced by the dominating personality of Rubens. An important pupil of Snyders was Jan Fyt (1611-1661), who excelled as an animal painter and colourist. He was at his best when he treated animals more in the manner of still life, but remained vastly inferior to his master when he tried to emulate his hunting scenes. Not all the five pictures catalogued under his name can be accepted as his own work. His great skill in rendering the varied textures of furs and feathers may be judged from _Game in a Larder_ (No. 1993), which is unquestionably authentic although it does not bear the signature which testifies to his authorship of _A Dog devouring Game_ (No. 1994).

ADRIAEN BROUWER

Both the Flemish school and the Dutch have an equal right to claim Adriaen Brouwer (1605 or 6-1638), who, born at Oudenarde, carried on the tradition of Bouts and the elder Brueghel. While still young, he was at Haarlem powerfully impressed by the art of Frans Hals, although it is extremely doubtful that he ever actually worked in his studio. Finally, having settled at Antwerp in 1631, he benefited by the example of Rubens. _The Smoker_ (No. 1916), in spite of the doubts that have been cast upon it, is a characteristic work of his at the time when, inspired by Frans Hals, he adopted a full impasto instead of his earlier glazes. It is signed with his initials “AB” in the bottom corner on the right. The handling is far coarser than that of the later _Interior of a Tavern_ (No. 1912), which is quite Rembrandtesque in the rendering of light and chiaroscuro. His inclination towards grimacing expression often made him depict such scenes as _The Operation_ (No. 1915), in which the patient’s face is contorted with pain, while the surgeon is bandaging his left shoulder.

Brouwer was the master of Joos van Craesbeeck (1606-1654?), who not only closely followed his teaching, but actually painted many replicas of Brouwer’s pictures which still pass under the better known artist’s name. _The Artist painting a Portrait_ (No. 1952D) was supposed to represent, and to be from the brush of, Brouwer, when the picture was bought for the Louvre. But on technical grounds it must be given to Craesbeeck—quite apart from the extreme improbability that the dissolute Brouwer, who spent most of his time in low taverns, should have lived in the elegant, not to say luxurious, surroundings here depicted, and died young. There can be no doubt that the painter seated before his easel, to whom a man-servant is offering a glass of wine, is Joos van Craesbeeck.

DAVID TENIERS

There is at the Louvre no picture by the elder David Teniers (1582-1649), who therefore only interests us here as the father and first master of the much greater artist David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690), who completed his artistic education under Rubens, without, however, abdicating his own personality. Indeed, those of his pictures which reflect the manner of Rubens too closely are of little account in the achievement of the younger Teniers, who only begins to be himself when he devotes his prolific brush to the social life of his contemporaries, and especially of the lower classes. His pictures constitute the most realistic and convincing record of the tastes, manners, and amusements of his time. His types are full of character, but without the exaggerations so often found in Brueghel and Brouwer. What he retained of Rubens, even in his Village Fêtes, Tavern Scenes, Dances, and Carousals is the application of the great master’s principles of light and harmonious colour. But apart from this, he rejected the “grand style” and the conscious search for beauty. The ugliness of his types and gestures led Louis XIV. to exclaim in front of his pictures, “_Ôtez-moi ces magots-là!_”

Few painters are as exhaustively represented at the Louvre as the younger Teniers. The Catalogue includes no fewer than thirty-nine entries under his name, two of which, in the La Caze collection (Nos. 2189 and 2190), are copies after pictures by Lotto and Titian respectively in the collection of the Archduke Leopold William, Governor of the Netherlands, to whom Teniers was appointed Court painter. It would serve no purpose here to enumerate the long list of Kermesse, Village Fête, and Alehouse Scenes in the French national collection. Among his most deservedly famous masterpieces is _The Return of the Prodigal Son_ (No. 2156), which belongs to a series of which another scene is to be seen at the Dulwich Gallery. The subject is really only a thinly veiled excuse for the painting of a _genre_ piece of the contemporary life of the better classes of his country. The scene of the feast is laid outside a country inn that figures in many of Teniers’s pictures. Fully signed, and dated 1644, the picture belongs to the beginning of Teniers’s very best period. In _The Temptation of St. Anthony_ (No. 2158) he rivals Bosch in the invention of grotesquely fantastic monsters. Among other important works by the master in the Louvre must be mentioned _The Denial of St. Peter_ (No. 2155), a painting of exquisite silvery quality, signed and dated

DAVID TENIERS, f. AN. 1646;

_The Works of Mercy_ (No. 2157); the _Village Fête_ (No. 2159); and the _Peasants dancing by an Inn Door_ (No. 2161), which was stolen from the collection in 1815 and returned in the following year with a letter explaining that it had been removed by a Frenchman who feared that it might fall into the hands of the Allied Forces.

By Teniers’s pupil, François Duchatel (1616?-1694?) is the excellent _Portrait of a Gentleman_ (No. 1960). Duchatel is a very rare master, whose style in portraiture so closely resembles that of Gonzales Coques that his pictures have been at times ascribed to that painter. Jacob van Artois (1613-1684?), the painter of the _Landscape_ (No. 1901) in the La Caze room, was one of the leading Flemish landscape painters of his time, and frequently collaborated with Teniers, who added the figures to some of his landscapes. He was the master of Cornelis Huysmans (1648-1727), who frequently assisted the battle painter, Van der Meulen, and is here represented by eight pictures (Nos. 2002-2009). Among the landscape painters of that period must also be mentioned Jan Siberechts (1627-1703), who spent the closing years of his life in England, but does not seem to have had much influence on the evolution of the English landscape school. By him is the _Rustic Scene_ (No. 2140A).

PHILIPPE DE CHAMPAIGNE

Both Philippe de Champaigne (1602-1674) and Adam Frans van der Meulen (1634-1690), though born at Brussels, resided in France the best part of their life, and are therefore generally classed with the painters of the French school, which accounts for their being represented at the Louvre in a manner which is quite out of proportion to their artistic significance. Still, if Philippe de Champaigne appears second-rate when compared with Rubens and Van Dyck, he is unquestionably the leading portrait painter of the contemporary French school in which he received his training. His powers were insufficient for the higher flights of imagination, and when his ambition led him to such compositions as _Christ in the House of Simon_ (No. 1927) or _Christ celebrating Easter with His Disciples_ (No. 1928), he was as dull and bombastic as most of his French contemporaries, whom he far excelled as a colourist. His portraits, on the other hand, are painted in a broad, honest, straightforward manner which has nothing in common with the monotonous pompousness of his age, as may be seen from the admirable group of two nuns in prayer, _Mother Catherine Agnes Arnaud and Sister Catherine de Sainte-Suzanne_ (No. 1934). The younger of the two nuns represents the artist’s daughter, who was healed from paralysis by a miracle recorded by a Latin inscription on the wall. The twenty pictures from Philippe de Champaigne’s brush, which are actually on view, also include the fine group of the two architects _François Mansard and Claude Perrault_ (No. 1944), bought in 1835 for the low price of £80; _The Provost and Aldermen of Paris_ (No. 1945); and the signed and dated portrait of _Robert Arnaud d’Andilly_ (No. 1939).

VAN DER MEULEN

Van der Meulen, a native of Brussels and pupil of Snayers, was the historiographer of Louis XIV.’s campaigns and victories. He was invited by Colbert to come to Paris, and was first employed to furnish designs for the Gobelins manufactory. Afterwards he accompanied Louis XIV. on his warlike expeditions, which he immortalised in numerous large paintings, most of which are now at the Louvre and in the Château at Versailles. His paintings are of considerable topographical interest, as they give accurate representations of the aspect of famous towns and fortresses in the seventeenth century, as in the _Entry of Louis XIV. and Marie-Thérèse into Arras_ (No. 2035), a similar scene at _Douai_ (No. 2033), and the _Arrival of the King in the Camp before Maastricht_ (No. 2040). It was Van der Meulen who founded the “tactical school” of battle painting, which substituted the orderly movement of masses for the wild mêlée of the hand-to-hand combat. Whole armies are seen advancing or retreating in long lines from a high vantage-ground which is generally occupied by the considerably larger figures of the army-leaders on rearing and caracoling horses, and looking for all the world like “_gens de qualité qui joueraient aux échecs avec des soldats de plomb_.” The official Catalogue mentions no fewer than twenty pictures by Van der Meulen.

MINOR FLEMISH PAINTERS

With the exception of Justus Sustermans (1597-1681), who was Van Dyck’s fellow-student under H. van Balen and afterwards rose to great fame as Court painter to Grand-Duke Cosimo II. of Tuscany (whose kinsman _Leopold de’ Medici_ is portrayed in No. 2154), and Pieter Neefs (1577?-1661?), whose _Church Interiors_ (Nos. 2059-2064) are remarkable for the faultless accuracy and precision of his architectural drawing, there are no other painters of the Flemish school whose works at the Louvre require close attention. We must content ourselves with the mere mention of the landscape painters Jan Frans van Bloemen, called Orizonte, a follower of Poussin and Claude; Jan van Breda, Francisque Millet, and Mathys Schoevaerts; Carl van Falens and Anton Grief, painters of hunting scenes; Jan Miel, who worked most of his life in Italy and was completely influenced by the masters of that country; the still-life painter Gaspard Pieter Verbruggen; the battle painter Sebastiaen Francken; and the prolific painter of large altarpieces, Jacob van Oost the Elder. With Balthasar Paul Ommeganck (1755-1826) and the still-life painter Jan Frans van Dael (1764-1840) we reach the beginning of the nineteenth century, a period of absolute stagnation in Flemish art which preceded the brilliant revival of the modern Belgian school.

THE GERMAN SCHOOL

Of all the important European schools of painting, the Early German school is the one of which it is almost impossible to gain anything like an adequate idea from the pictures that have found their way into the Galleries of foreign countries. The fact is that with the exception of two or three leading masters, like Holbein and Dürer, the Early Germans found but scant favour beyond the confines of their own country until comparatively recent years—that is to say, until the majority of important examples had been systematically gathered in by the museums of Germany. Now that the importance of the German primitives and Early Renaissance painters has been generally recognised, it will be practically impossible to regain the lost ground and to fill up the serious gaps which prevent our forming an adequate idea of the evolution of German art in the museums of other countries. The Louvre is no exception to this rule. The numerical weakness of the German section is unfortunately not atoned for by the importance of the examples included, which, with but few exceptions, are of little artistic account.

Under the circumstances it would be useless to attempt a consecutive narrative of the evolution of German art as illustrated by the pictures at the Louvre, and we must confine ourselves to a brief discussion of the few noteworthy works in the collection.

“THE MASTER OF THE BARTHOLOMEW ALTAR”

The first picture of importance belongs to the period when the idealism of the Early Gothic primitives was already replaced by a strong naturalism, and the creation of types by that of clearly characterised individualities. This picture, the _Descent from the Cross_ (No. 2737), by the unknown “Master of the Bartholomew Altar,” is so called, in accordance with German custom, from his best known work, the great altarpiece in the Pinakothek at Munich. In the large Louvre picture, which bears a close resemblance to the precious little panel by the same master in the possession of the Hon. Edward Wood, at Temple Newsam, the Saviour is being lowered from the Cross by Nicodemus into the hands of one of the Holy Women on the left, and of Joseph of Arimathæa on the right. The group is completed by St. John supporting the Virgin on the extreme left, the Magdalen and another Holy Woman on the right, and a Disciple seated on a ladder above the central group. The figures are shown, as in the Temple Newsam painting of the same subject, against a gold background framed with rich Gothic tracery. This altarpiece is believed to be the last picture by this Cologne master, who flourished between 1490 and 1515, and was in his later manner influenced by Rogier van der Weyden and other Flemish masters. This eminently important Early German picture was painted for a Jesuit establishment in the rue St. Antoine, Paris, which accounts for its presence in the French national collection.

COLOGNE PAINTERS

The “Master of the Death of Mary,” to whose school belongs the _Descent from the Cross_, with a predella representing _The Last Supper_, and a lunette with _St. Francis receiving the Stigmata_ (No. 2738), has been identified by Wauters and Aldenhoven with the early-sixteenth-century Flemish painter Joos van Cleef the Elder, and belongs to the Antwerp rather than the Cologne school. The “Master of St. Severin,” to whom the official Catalogue ascribes the two _Scenes from the Life of St. Ursula_ (Nos. 2738C and 2738D), was probably a Flemish painter who worked at Cologne at the beginning of the sixteenth century. But the two panels at the Louvre, which were formerly at the Cluny Museum, are not from his brush. They are the work of his pupil, the “Master of the Ursula Legend,” and belong to a series of which other panels can be seen at the Victoria and Albert Museum and at Cologne.

The first definite name in the annals of the Cologne school is that of Bartolomäus Bruyn (_c._ 1493-1555), who was a follower of Joos van Cleef but subsequently became completely imbued with the Italian spirit. His portraits, in which he remained more faithful to the tradition of his country, are of greater significance than his religious compositions, and closely resemble those by Joos van Cleef; but the _Portrait of a Man with a White Cross on his Breast_ (No. 2702) is only a school picture of indifferent quality.

ALBRECHT DÜRER

The flourishing school which had its centre at Nuremberg is represented at the Louvre by the master who marks its zenith and who, if his craftsmanship was not always on a level with the perfection of Holbein’s, shares with the Augsburg master the honour of uncontested leadership of all German artists. Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) was born at Nuremberg, of Hungarian descent. He studied his art under Michael Wohlgemut, a very able Nuremberg painter, who was, however, led by his popularity to factory-like production of pictures that passed under his name, although they were largely executed by inferior pupils. Dürer, who excelled equally as an engraver and as a painter, was, on the other hand, one of the most sincere and personal artists of his time—a profound thinker, a shrewd observer, a student of life in all its phases, an idealist who was ever striving for beautiful expression, even though the realistic tradition of his country did not allow him to attain to the abstract ideal of beauty which had been reached by some of the contemporary Italians. Indeed, Dürer may with justice be called the Leonardo of the North. He studied Venetian art on a visit to Venice in 1505, whither he had been preceded by his fame. He also travelled to the Netherlands in 1520, the year in which he painted the signed and dated _Head of an Old Man_ (No. 2709), his other picture at the Louvre being the not very masterly _Head of a Child_ (No. 2709A).

DÜRER’S FOLLOWERS

Dürer died in 1528 from a disease contracted during his journey to the Netherlands. Among his principal pupils were Georg Pencz (_c._ 1500-1550), to whom is without sufficient reason attributed the indifferent half figure of _St. John the Evangelist_ (No. 2730); and Hans Sebald Beham (_c._ 1500-1550), the famous engraver, of whom the Louvre is fortunate to possess the only known painting, a table top divided by golden lances into four compartments, each of which contains a _Subject from the Story of David_ (No. 2701): the _Entry of Saul into Jerusalem; David and Bathsheba_ (in which scene is introduced a portrait of Archbishop Albrecht of Mayence, for whom the work was executed); the _Siege of Rabbath_; and the _Prophet Nathan before David_ (with a portrait of the artist and the initials of his name, “H. S. B.”).

LUCAS CRANACH

This same Archbishop Albrecht, whose features are also known to us from two engravings by Dürer and a painting by Grünewald, was one of the most generous patrons of Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), whose busy workshops at Wittenberg supplied the whole north and east of Germany with portraits, altarpieces, historical and mythological pictures. Lucas Cranach was a follower of Grünewald, the great head of the Colmar school. Apart from his merit as a colourist and an excellent draughtsman, he attracts by the naïve grace of his nude figures and by the complete manner in which he reflects the taste of his time and country. But of the five little pictures that figure in the Louvre Catalogue under his name, not one is from his own hand. Indeed, the _Venus in a Landscape_ (No. 2703) is the only one that may with a degree of safety be attributed to his son, Lucas Cranach the Younger, who carried on the management of the studio some years before his father’s death, and continued to imitate his style until his own death in 1586. The _Venus_ bears the usual Cranach signature of a winged serpent and the date 1520. The same crest, with the date 1532, figures on the portrait of _Johann Friedrich III., Elector of Saxony_ (No. 2704), who is known on one occasion to have given a wholesale order of sixty replicas of the same portrait to the Wittenberg master. It may be imagined that a commission of this nature would not be executed by the head of the studio, but left to his staff of assistants. The _Fighting Savages_ (No. 2702A) and the two _Portraits_ (Nos. 2703A and 2705) are, at the best, studio works.

HANS HOLBEIN

We now come to the second of the two commanding figures in German art, Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543), who was born at Augsburg and studied under his father, the elder artist of the same name. When he reached his maturity the Italian influence had already permeated German art, but he was the first Northern master who knew how to benefit by the real spirit of the Renaissance without imitating the letter; the first to develop a noble, dignified style, free from the florid trivialities which so many Northerners took from certain Italian painters. He was above all a marvellous portrait painter who, in his drawings as well as in his paintings, combines the most exquisite delicacy and subtlety with rare strength, the greatest precision of detail with freedom and breadth of handling. Only this phase of his art is represented at the Louvre, which certainly owns one perfect example of Holbein’s portraiture in the _Portrait of Erasmus_ (No. 2715, Plate XXIV.).

Holbein had settled in Basle in 1519. He went to England in 1526, with a letter of introduction from Erasmus to Sir Thomas More. From one of Erasmus’s letters it would appear that Holbein had portrayed him at least three times before 1524; and the picture now in the Louvre was probably the one that was painted for Sir Thomas More—a better recommendation than any letter of introduction! The profile is drawn with inimitable mastery; and the whole character of the man can be read from the expression of the tight-pressed lips and mobile features, as he sits writing at his desk. Note, also, the marvellous expressiveness of the hands, studies for which are to be found in the collection of drawings at the Louvre.

In view of the personal relations which link together Holbein, Erasmus, and Sir Thomas More, it would be pleasant if we could accept the so-called _Portrait of Thomas More, Great Chancellor of England_ (No. 2717), as authentic. It does not, however, represent Holbein’s first English patron, nor does it appear to be from the master’s own brush.

THE KRATZER PORTRAIT

Holbein’s first sojourn in England extended from 1526 to 1528, in which year he returned to Basle. It must have been shortly before his departure that he painted the _Portrait of Nicolas Kratzer, Astronomer to King Henry VIII._ (No. 2713); it is an unquestionably authentic work, although it has been so extensively repainted that little is now left of the original, save the general disposition of the design and the instruments placed on the table and hung on the wall, which are executed with all the loving care that Holbein was wont to bestow upon such accessories. Still, even in its present condition, the portrait is a thoroughly convincing likeness of “a man who is brimful of wit, jest, and humorous fancies”—as Kratzer is referred to by one of his contemporaries. A sheet of paper on the left of the table appears to be inscribed:—

_Imago ad vivam effigiem expressa
Nicolai Kratzeri monacensis qui bavarus erat
Quadragessimum annum tempore illo complebat.
1528._

(1497-1543)

GERMAN SCHOOL

No. 2715.—PORTRAIT OF ERASMUS

(Portrait de Didier Érasme)

The Humanist is seen at half length and in forefile to the left,
before a table at which he is writing. He wears a fur-lined coat
and a dark cap. A green figured curtain forms the background.

Painted in oil on panel.

1 ft. 4¾ in. × 1 ft. 0¾ in. (0·42 × 0·32.)]

Although decidedly superior to another version of the same picture at Lambeth Palace, the _Portrait of William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury_ (No. 2714), which bears the inscription,

ANNO. Dm. MDXXVII. ETATIS. SVE, LXX.,

cannot without hesitation be accepted as an original work. It lacks, at any rate, the _finesse_ of the beautiful drawing at Windsor Castle, upon which it is evidently based.

To the same year belongs the _Portrait of Sir Richard Southwell_ (No. 2719), to whose treacherous accusation was due the execution of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. But this picture, again, is only a replica, by an inferior hand, of the magnificent portrait in the Uffizi Gallery (No. 765). An inscription in the background, at both sides of the head, reads:

on the left: X.^O IVLII. ANNO. and on the right: ETATIS SVÆ
H. VIII. XXVIII. ANNO XXXIII.

It would thus appear that the picture was painted in 1537, the twenty-eighth year of Henry VIII.’s reign. The _Portrait of a Man holding a Carnation and a Rosary_ (No. 2720) is a picture of poor quality and has no connection whatever with Holbein.

PORTRAIT OF ANNE OF CLEVES

Of far greater importance and undisputed authenticity is the _Portrait of Anne of Cleves, Fourth Wife of Henry VIII._ (No. 2718). No credence is to be attached to the legend invented by Bishop Burnet more than a century after that ill-treated lady’s death, according to which Holbein’s flattering portrait was instrumental in “bluff King Hal’s” choice of his fourth spouse and responsible for the king’s disappointment at setting eyes upon Anne. The picture, which was painted in 1539, seven years after Holbein’s definite return to England and to the service of Henry VIII., has not only that air of inevitable truthfulness which distinguishes all Holbein’s portraiture, but tallies to a remarkable degree with the descriptions sent to Henry VIII. by his agents. Whilst not exactly unpleasant to behold, the features are those of a spiritless, dull woman—an impression which is intensified by the absence of life and character in the hands, which Holbein invariably studied as closely as the face. The painting of the richly embroidered and jewelled costume, the stately symmetry of the design, and the beautiful scheme of colour are really the chief attractions of this picture.

The _Adoration of the Magi_ (No. 2711A), which was at one time attributed to the elder, and subsequently to the younger, Holbein, is now rightly given to the latter’s contemporary and compatriot Gumpold Giltlinger, an Augsburg painter of no particular distinction.

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Before the end of the sixteenth century German art had entered upon a period of complete decadence. The only painter who claims attention, not so much for the undeniable merit of his very highly finished landscapes, but for the fact that he exercised a certain influence upon Rembrandt, is the Frankfort painter, Adam Elsheimer (1578-1621?), who worked at Rome, and who is represented at the Louvre by _The Flight into Egypt_ (No. 2710) and _The Good Samaritan_ (No. 2711).

For the rest, the German painters of his period and of the whole of the seventeenth century retained scarcely a trace of national character, and were completely under the sway of the foreign, and particularly of the Italian, schools. Thus, Johann Rottenhammer (1564-1623), the painter of _The Death of Adonis_ (No. 2732) and _Diana and Calisto_ (No. 2733), was successively dominated by Jan Brueghel and by Tintoretto. The flower painter, Abraham Mignon (1640-1679), though born at Frankfort, was a pupil of David de Heem and a Dutchman in his art. His pictures at the Louvre (Nos. 2724-2729) are distributed between the German and the Dutch sections. Philipp Peter Roos, better known as Rosa da Tivoli (1665?-1705), who painted the _Wolf devouring a Sheep_ (No. 2731), lived in Rome and adopted the style of the country of his domicile. _The Bear Hunt_ (No. 2734) is the work of Carl Ruthart, another unimportant Italianising German of the second half of the seventeenth century.

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The work of the Hamburg painter, Baltasar Denner (1685-1749), has no claim to be considered as a manifestation of art: it is merely a display of mechanical skill in the microscopic rendering of the little lines and pores and stubbly hair on the skin of old people’s faces. He lived for seven years in London, where he painted in 1724 the signed _Portrait of an Old Woman_ (No. 2706), which was bought in 1852 for £756. Another characteristic example of his misapplied skill is the portrait (No. 2707) in the La Caze Room.

Christian Wilhelm Dietrich (1712-1774) and Heinrich Wilhelm Schweickhardt (1746-1787) are too insignificant to deserve serious consideration. The same remark applies to Christian Seybold (1703?-1768), who became Court Painter to the Empress Maria Theresa; and to Johann Ernest Heinsius, who was active as a portrait painter in France during the reign of Louis XVI. All that is to be noted in their pictures at the Louvre is the total absence of all artistic merit.

Of somewhat greater importance, though by no means of the first rank, are the two last German artists who claim our attention: Raphael Mengs (1728-1779) and Angelica Kaufmann, (1741-1807), who is catalogued among the painters of the German school, although she was Swiss by birth, Italian by education, and English by domicile. Her sex was no bar to her becoming one of the Foundation members of the English Royal Academy, and she is generally counted among the English painters. The portrait group of _The Baroness von Krüdner and her Daughter_ (No. 2722) is a poor example of her art, which invariably sought to please by conventional prettiness.

Raphael Mengs, the painter of the portrait of _Marie Amelia Christina of Saxony, Wife of Charles III. of Spain_, was born at Aussig in Bohemia, studied whilst still a boy in Italy, and became Court Painter to Charles III., who invited him to Madrid in 1761. Mengs was an exceedingly accomplished technician and draughtsman, who modelled himself on Raphael and the Italian eclectics, but was wholly lacking in originality and inspiration. He tried his hand in every branch of his art, and was most successful in portraiture, although even his portraits are lacking in penetration of character. He, however, excelled as a copyist, and died in Rome in 1779.

THE SPANISH SCHOOL