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Presently G.J. was mounting the staircase and passing statues by Canova and Thorwaldsen, and portraits of which the heads had been painted by Lawrence and the hands and draperies by Lawrence's hireling, and huger canvasses on which the heads and breasts had been painted by Rubens and everything else by Rubens's regiment of hirelings.
It is so perfectly true to nature that one can hardly persuade himself that the living animals are not before him. The pictures known as Rembrandt's "School of Anatomy" are also as deservedly famous. What ever the criticism of one who is no artist may be worth, it is my opinion that Rubens's paintings and some of those in this museum, are the truest to nature of all that I have seen in Europe.
This royal peacemaking we have always thought one of the most amusing of Rubens's great canvases at the Louvre, as he very cleverly gives the impression that neither the Queen nor her son is taking the matter seriously. You will scarcely believe me, I fear, when I tell you that we only stopped at one château this afternoon.
Here he not only had the practical task of painting Rubens's compositions for him, in company with numerous others, but had also the advantage of studying the works of Titian and other of the great Italian masters in Rubens's famous collection. If the hand of Van Dyck is traceable in some of the pictures of Rubens at this period, so the spirit of Rubens is very obvious in those of Van Dyck.
Rubens's great ceremonial paintings, containing numerous figures and commemorating historical scenes in honour of his Royal patrons, were executed by his own hands, or by the hands he taught and guided, with great skill and speed.
The flowery ornaments on the façades of these churches, their columns, gilded torches, elaborate and heavy designs, cannot be compared to Rubens's masterpieces, but, from the point of view of propaganda, which was the only point of view that mattered, the glorious paintings of the Antwerp master fulfilled the same purpose.
The history of Rubens's mother is worthy of being told even had she not had a famous son who painted a beautiful picture of her. Rubens's "Holy Families" are like those of no other painter. The Virgin, the Child, all the others in the picture, are quite different from the Italian figures. These are human beings, good to look upon; full of love and joy, softness and beauty.
Thus we went to the Luxembourg Palace, the gallery of which then contained some of Rubens's masterpieces, as well as numerous works by the greatest painters. At present nothing is to be seen there but pictures of the modern French school. I am the only painter of that class not represented. The old masters have since been removed to the Louvre.
Not one of the Rubens's pictures among all the scores that decorate chapels and churches here, has the least tendency to purify, to touch the affections, or to awaken the feelings of religious respect and wonder. The "Descent from the Cross" is vast, gloomy, and awful; but the awe inspired by it is, as I take it, altogether material.
At the station a crowd of guides were shouting that there was time to go and see Rubens's picture of , at the church of . This seemed to us a droll contrast to the cry at our stations, "Fifteen minutes for refreshments!" It offered such aesthetic refreshment in place of carnal oysters, that purely for the frolic we went to see.
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