Peter Paul Rubens [antikvár]

Peter Paul Rubens 1577-1640 The sixth child of Jan Rubens and Marín Pypelinckx was born at Siegen (Germany) on June 28, 1577, and natned next day for Saints Peter and Paul, whose feast it then was. His father, though born Catholic, liad had, beeause of Calvinist leanings, to leave the Spanish Netherlands. Settling first in Cologne, he had all but forfeited his life through the discovery of his liaison with Princess Anna of Saxony, whom he had served officially as a diplomatic advisor. When Jan died in 1587, his widow felt free to return to Antwerp, where both herfamily and that ofher errant husband had been prosperously settled. Education, begun for Peter Paul and his elder brother Philip with their learned father, developed at Verdonck's Latin Sehool. There Peter Paul befriended a future patron, Balthasar Moretus, heirto the Plánt in Press. The eall to provide her daughter's dowry forced Maria Rubens to send Peter Paul, aged fourteen, to make his own living as a page in a noble household. Soon tiring of courtly service, he persuaded his mother to have him trained as a painter: first with her kinsman Verhaeght; then with Van Noort; and finally, for almost four years, with the most distinguished of the Antwerp Romanists, Ottó van Veen. On May 9, 1600, two years after he had been accepted as a master, Peter Paul left for Italy 'in order to study at close quarters the works of the ancient and modern masters and to improve himself in painting by their example. He went first to Venice, where he obtained afortunate introduction to Vincenzo I Gonzaga, who employed him at Mantua. By 1602, Peter Paul had visited every artistic centre of note in Italy: including Florence in October, 1600, for the marriage by proxy of the Duchess of Mantua .s sister, Marié de Medici; and Romé for the winter of 1601-02. In the metropolis he obtainecl his first public commission through his fellow countryman, Jean Richárdot: three altarpieces for the chapel of St. Helena, in Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. In 1603 he was entrusted with his first diplomatic mission, to take gifts to Philip III and his court. In Madrid and at the Escorial he had his first sight of the Hapsburg collections, including more than seventy works by Titian; and at Valladolid he painted for the Duke of Lerma a superb equestrian portrait, besides a Democritus and Heraclitus to replace copies of Italian masterpieces irreparably damaged on the journey. He returned via Genoa to recover expenses from Vincenzo s banker, Nicolo Pallavacini, at whose cost he was to paint for S. Ambrogio there The Circumcision (1605), and The Miracle of St. Francis Xavier (1619). For the principal chapel of the Jesuit church in Mantua he painted three huge canvases (1604-05). Through another member of the Genoese banking patriciate, Monsignor Jacopo Serra, he gained the most, coveted commission in the Rorne of 1606, the high altarpiece for the Oratorian Chiesa Nuova; and thereby in 1608 a commission for the Oratorians at Fermo. His work for the Román Oratory was barely finished when he had to ride post-haste to Antwerp, recalled by Philip s news that their mother was dying. Peter Paul reached home too laté to see her alive. His first altarpiece for the Chiesa Nuova, painted on canvas, for which he himself had proposed a replacement on slates (beeause of adverse lighting), became her funeral monument. Within afew months ofhis return to Flanders he was 'bound with golden fetters' to the Hapsburg Regen ts, the Infanta Isabella and the Archduke Albert. In October, 1609, he married Isabella, daughter of Jan Brandt, a lawyer and humanist. He established himself as the leading painter of his country by a trilogy of monumental works: The elevation of the Cross (1609-10), for St. Walpurgas, Antwerp; The Deposition (1611- 14), for Antwerp Cathedral; and The Conversion of St. Bavon (National Gallery, London). In January, 1611, he bought the land in Antwerp on which to construct his famous house and garden. By May that year his studio was over-full; more than a hundred would-be pupils had to be turnéd away. For the church of the Antwerp Jesuits, he acted both as adviser on design and master-decorator in sculpture and painting (contracts of ' 1614 and 1620). 1621 marked a turning point in his career: on April 9, the Twelve Years' Truce ended, and on July 13, the Archduke Albert died, leaving the painter for the next twelve years intensely busy as trusted adviser in diplomacy to the widowed Infanta; moreover, in June his chief engraver, Lucas Vorsterman, by whose skill Rubens' International reputation was increasing, had a serious break-down. Nevertheless, major contracts came from abroad as well as from Flanders: twelve models for a tapestry on The Life of Constantine (1621, for Louis XIII); two vast cycles of political allegories to decorate gallé ries in the new Palais de Luxembourg, of which the first was delivered in 1625 (for Marié de Medici); tapestry designs on The Triumph of the Eucharist for the convent of the Descalzas Reales, Madrid (1626-28, for the Infanta Isabella); and two related commissions for London ceilings, The Triumph of the Duke of Buckingham (by 1628) for York House, and nine pieces for the Banqueting House in Whitehall (ready 1634, for Charles 1). The death of his wife in 1626 overtaxed the Christian stoicism of Rubens. He was the readier to immerse himself in diplomatic voyages to Spain, Francé, Holland and England, where at last he achieved his own Project for the Cessation of Arms on béli alf of Spain and the Spanish Netherlands. His last years were made happy by freedom to pursue undistracted his 'dolcissima professione', to enjoy and paint landseapes in the neighbourhood of his Cháteau de Steen; and by his family life. In December, 1630, he wedded Hél&na Fourrnent, the sixteen-year-old niece of his first wife. Two sons survived from the earlier marriage, and by HéUna he had three daughters and two more sons. In 1636 he was appointed court painter to the Infanta's successor, the Infante Ferdinánd. To solemnise this successful generaVs Triumphal Entry into impoverished Antwerp two years earlier, he - with every painter in the city working to his direction - had turnéd the streets into a gigantic theatre. Through the Infante was arranged his last contract (1636) for the Hapsburgs, the furnishing of a hundred and twenty painted mythologies for Philip IV's hunting box near Madrid. In this mammoth task he trusted assistants to an unwonted degree to paint the canvases from his sketches. He was pressed for delivery; and frequently his painting arm was crippled by gout, of which he had first complained in January, 1627. He died on May 30, 1640, when the gout reached his heart.