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xlvi HISTORICAL SKETCH OF ART
little town of Siegen, formerly in Nassau. Our artist’s father, the
Antwerp justice Johannes Rubens, being suspected of a leaning to-
wards the Reformation, sought refuge in flight from the Span
Inquisition, and joined the party of William of Orange. Arrive
at the Rhipe, where the emigrants assembled, he formed an inti-
macy witb Anna of Saxony, the cr nsuous wife of William, of
such a nature as furnished the Prince with sufficient grounds for a
divorce. The guilty lover was consigned in 1571 to the fortress
Dillenburg. His wife, Marie Pypeling, who had followed him
into exile, was induced by the severity
of his punishment to
forgive the offender the disgrace he had brought upon her, and
to join him at § n, the place assigned to him in his
abode. Here accordingly, on 29th June, 1577, on SS and
Paul’s day, Peter Paul Rubens was born. In the following year,
John Rubens received permission to remove to Cologne. It is con-
ceivable that his lot should have damped his ardour for service with
the Princes of Orange, and encouraged a desire to be reconciled to
the Spanish government. John Rubens, however, died pendir
the negotiations which ensued, but his wife finally made her peac
with the Spanish ecclesiastical authorities, returned in 1588 to Ant-
verp, and as a pledge for the genuineness of her conversion placed
her son in a Jesuit school. In the character of the man, however,
there was nothing jesuitical; but in the sensuous splendour of his
religious pictures, in the accessories of his classical representations,
which however brilliant are often superficial, it is easy to discern
the effects of his training in the then flourishing schools of the
all powerful Jesuits.
He received instruction in painting from Adam van Noort, a
thorough master of his art as we are assured, though no authenticated
works of his are preserved, and from Otho van Veen, commonly
called Otho Vaenius, court-painter to the Dukes of Parma, and an ar-
tist more distinguished for erudition than force of imagination.
The Trinity and the Holy Family with the Parrot (‘La Vierge au
Perroquet’) in Antwerp Museum are reckoned among the first of
Rubens’s works. If this be really the case the painter must have
developed some of his peculiar characteristics at a surprisingly
early period, and to a great extent have acquired his style before
his sojourn in Italy. In the year 1600, Rubens undertook, accord-
ing to the then prevailing custom with artists, who looked upon
Italy as the high school of art, a journey to the South. The follow-
ing year we find him in the service of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga, in
his time the most pleasure-loving, most enthusiastic connoisseur of
all princes. Rubens was sent in 1603 to Spain, as bearer of costly
gifts, in the shape more particularly of numerous pictures, to the
court of King Philip II. On his return he took up his abode suc-
cessively in Mantua, Rome, and Genoa, until the year 1608, when
the returned home. |