Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 29, 2025
But, in his "Crucifixion," it is Tintoret himself who pays homage, and we forget the master in the theme. We may say of Rubens's art, in a new sense, "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre." The greatest art is not magnificent, but it is war, desperate and without trappings, a war in which victory comes through the confession of defeat.
The story of Peter Paul Rubens, whose birthday falling upon the saint days of Peter and Paul gave to him his name, is hardly more interesting than that of his parents, although it is quite different. The story of Rubens's parents seems a part of the artist's story, because it must have had something to do with influencing his life, so let us begin with that.
Rubens's daily life is described thus: "His life was very methodical. He rose at four, attended mass, breakfasted, and painted for hours; then he rested, dined, worked until late afternoon; then, after riding for an hour or two one of his spirited horses, and later supping, he would spend the evening with his friends.
In this day of large doings there is something about such details that seems childish, but a "gold chain" was by no means a small affair at a time when $96 was considered an ample money-provision for an artist. That gorgeous gold chain, a mark of distinction rather than a reward, is to be seen in all its glory in one of Rubens's great paintings.
After that he studied under another artist, who was both a scholar and a gentleman, Van Veen, and with him Peter Paul was able to speak in Latin and in his many other languages, while learning to paint at the same time. Thus we find Rubens's lot was always cast, not among the rich, but among the intelligent, the well bred, and the cultivated.
Rubens's piety has always struck us as of this sort. If he takes a pious subject, it is to show you in what a fine way he, Peter Paul Rubens, can treat it. He never seems to doubt but that he is doing it a great honor.
If Rubens had gone about with all the chains and decorations given him by kings and other great ones of the earth he would have been weighted down, and would have needed two pairs of shoulders on which to display them. Rubens's first wife died; and when he married again, he was as fond of painting pictures of the second wife as he had been of the first.
It was not unlike that of one of the three goddesses in Rubens's 'Judgment of Paris, and in contour was nigh perfection. But it was in her full face that the vision of her mother was most apparent. 'Did you cook all this, Avice? he asked, arousing himself. She turned and half-smiled, merely murmuring, 'Yes, sir. Well he knew the arrangement of those white teeth.
Thus we read criticisms like that of Sir Joshua's; and many of Rubens's pictures are marred in this manner. A story is told of Van Dyck and other pupils of Rubens breaking into the master's studio and smudging a picture which Van Dyck afterward repaired by painting in the damaged portion most successfully.
Compare with it one of Rubens's orgies, where the overgrown, rubicund men and women and fauns tumble about in tumultuous, riotous intoxication: that is a bacchanal; they have been drinking, those magnificent brutes, there is wine firing their blood and weighing down their heads. But here all is different, in this so-called Bacchanal of Mantegna.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking