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Among them were choice specimens of Rubens, Ruysdael, Vandyke, Terburg, Gerard Dow, Teniers, Mieris, Paul Potter, Wouvermans, Rembrandt, Hobbema, Cranach, and Holbein. French and Italian pictures were in a minority, but all were authentic and masterly.
A comparison between the two men must not be carried too far, for Rubens was essentially a painter, attacking the field of decoration only with the overflow of imagination, while Lebrun's life and talent were wholly directed in the way of beautifying palaces and châteaux. Yet Rubens' work gave a fresh impulse to tapestry weaving in Brussels while Lebrun was inspiring it in France.
The Gothic days gave borders the deep soft tones of serious mood; the Renaissance played on a daintier scale; the Seventeenth Century rushed into too frank a palette. It remained for Rubens and Lebrun to find a scheme both rich and subdued, to bring back the taste errant. Here let me note a peculiarity of colour, noticeable in work of Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century borders.
The great influence of Rubens can hardly be fully appreciated without a visit to this Flemish capital, where he lived so long, where he died, and where his ashes rest in the Church of St. Jacques. Here is the burial place of many noble families, and among them that of Rubens, his tomb being situated just back of the high altar.
The walls and dome of the great central hall are covered with immense paintings in the style of Rubens, mainly by his pupils; and, of these, one over the front entrance represents Peace descending from heaven, bearing various symbols and, apparently, entering the hall.
I was glad, in the very last of the twelve rooms, to come upon some Dutch and Flemish pictures, very few, but very welcome; Rubens, Rembrandt, Vandyke, Paul Potter, Teniers, and others, men of flesh and blood, and warm fists, and human hearts.
But it is with Rubens' 'Arundel Family, which, we must remember, ranks second in English family pictures, that we have to do. Thomas, Earl of Arundel, and the Lady Alathea, are under a portico with twisted columns, like those in Raphael's cartoons; a rich curtain, and a landscape with a large mansion are seen beyond.
At first he planned a reproduction of Rubens' palace in Antwerp, open loggie for studios, leafy gardens covered with flowers at all seasons, and in the paths, gazelles, giraffes, birds of bright plumage, like flying flowers, and other exotic animals which this great painter used as models in his desire to copy Nature in all its magnificence.
I watered the dusty floor of the shop with tears of vexation as I resumed my search for the farthings, and having found them I went back to the saddler's, pounding them in my hot hand, and bitterly disappointed. I don't suppose that Rubens understood the feelings which gave an extra warmth to my caresses, as I hugged him in my arms, exclaiming, "You aren't afraid of me, you dear thing!"
Indeed, the Flemish school, of which Rubens is the head, was formed upon that of the Venetian; like them, he took his figures too much from the people before him. But it must be allowed in favour of the Venetians that he was more gross than they, and carried all their mistaken methods to a far greater excess.
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