United States or Pitcairn Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Also there is another Rubens family group with wives and other relatives. They thought well of themselves, the Rubens family, and little wonder. In the spacious approach there is one of Constantin Meunier's famous figures. You rejoice that he followed Rodin's advice and gave up the brush for the chisel. As a painter he was not more than mediocre.
Beruete claims that the Rubens influence is not to be seen in Velasquez, only El Greco's. Every object, living or inanimate, that swam through the eyeballs of the Spaniard surely the most wonderful pair of eyes in history was never forgotten. His powers of assimilation were unexcelled.
As Rubens grew in fame, he found that many were jealous of him, and on one occasion a rival proposed that he and Rubens each paint a picture upon a certain subject and leave it to judges to decide which work was the best Rubens's or his own. "No," said Rubens. "My attempts have been subjected to the scrutiny of connoisseurs in Italy and Spain.
Rubens had long been accustomed to the ways of polite society. The magnificence of his manner, and the fine egotism he showed in his work, captivated the Court. The Duke was proud of his ward and paraded him before his artistic friends as the coming man, incidentally explaining that it was the Duke of Mantua who had made him and not he himself.
On the walls hung the works of Vandyke and Correggio and Raphael and Rubens; but the pure faces of art's creation looked down on statesmen bending low to the beck of adventuresses, old men pawning a noble name for the leer of a Portsmouth, and women vying for the glance of a jaded king. At the far end of the apartment was a page-boy dressed as Cupid, singing love-songs.
Then, to crown all, he mourned the loss of a young mother and so did I. I involuntarily showed off Rubens as he approached, and he lingered and watched us. By a sort of impulse I took off my little hat, as I had been taught to do to strangers. He lifted his with a dismal grace and moved on.
It was simply true that the succession of "sells" and practical jokes of which Rubens and I were the victims during his visits did recall the tricks supposed to be sacred to the Festival of All Fools.
Then, one by one, as the darkness falls, we see them file away on the road to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man is left in silence. Then follows the descent from the cross, which suggests comparison with Rubens' famous painting in the Cathedral at Antwerp, but here shown with a fineness of touch and delicacy of feeling which that great painter of muscles and mantles could never attain.
A similar head in the Uffizi is a copy, Sir Walter Armstrong to the contrary notwithstanding. The Flemish schools are to be seen in the basement, not altogether a favourable place, though in the afternoon there is an agreeable light. Like Rubens, Jan van Eyck visited Spain and left the impress of his style. But the Van Eycks at the Prado are now all queried, though several are noteworthy.
The construction of this splendid edifice was entrusted to Jacques de Brosse, who immediately commenced removing the ruins of the dilapidated hôtel which encumbered the space destined for the new elevation; and four years subsequently the first stone was laid of the regal pile which transmitted his own name to posterity, linked with those of Marie de Medicis and Peter Paul Rubens.
Word Of The Day