Page:Cyclopedia of painters and paintings (IA cyclopediaofpain04cham).pdf/102

with a letter of recommendation to the Cardinal Montalto. Having executed the Duke's commission, and painted a triptych for the Chapel of St. Helena in the Church of Sta. Croce in Gerusalemme, by order of the Archduke Albert, Rubens returned to Mantua early in 1603. In March he was sent to Spain as the Duke's messenger, with presents for the King and certain high dignitaries. The pictures which formed part of them, chiefly by an inferior artist, Pietro Fachotti, having been much damaged en route, were restored at Valladolid by Rubens, and as two were irreparably injured he painted his Democritus, and Heraclitus, now in the Madrid Museum, to replace them. He also painted an equestrian portrait of the Duque de Lerma and several portraits of beautiful Spanish women for the Duke of Mantua; after which he returned to Mantua at the end of April, 1604, and painted an altarpiece for the Church of the Trinity. The wings were destroyed in 1797 during the French occupation, but the central piece, representing the Trinity, is preserved in the public library at Mantua. At the end of 1605 Rubens went to Rome to continue his studies. In July, 1607, he met the Duke at Genoa, and in the course of six or seven weeks made 139 sketches of palaces, afterwards published at Antwerp (1613). At this time, perhaps, he modelled the bust of Spinola, still preserved in the family palace, and received a commission from the Marchese Pallavicini for his picture of Ignatius Loyola, which he sent from Antwerp in 1620. Returning to Rome in 1607, Rubens finished his picture of Pope Gregory the Great with Saints (sent to Grenoble by Napoleon in 1811), and in the autumn of 1608, having received news of the dangerous illness of his mother, he returned to Antwerp, where he arrived in November, after her death. Depressed, and homesick for Italy, he would soon have gone back to Rome had not the Archduke Albert, moved by the commendations of Otto van Veen, Rubens's old master, treated him with much consideration at Brussels, and commissioned him to paint his own portrait, that of the Infanta Isabella, a Holy Family for the oratory of his palace, and a large altarpiece for the church at Candenburg, the triptych of S. Ildefonso, now in the Museum at Vienna. In 1609 the Archduke made Rubens his court painter, gave him a gold chain and medal, and granted him numerous privileges. Renouncing his intention to return to Italy, Rubens obtained permission to fix his residence at Antwerp, where, on October 13, 1609, he married Isabella Brandt. Commissions now crowded upon him to such an extent that at the beginning of 1611 he had refused more than one hundred. Among the works of this time are the Delivery of the Keys, Church of St. Gudule, Brussels; The Erection of the Cross, Notre Dame, Antwerp; and an Adoration of the Magi, Antwerp Museum; the St. Therese, the St. Anne, and the Dead Christ in the same collection. Enriched by inheritance, by his wife's dowry, and by his own labours, Rubens in 1611 built himself a beautiful house at Antwerp with a round gallery lighted from above, which he decorated with his copies, original works, and acquired objects of art. In September of the same year he agreed to paint for the guild of the Harquebusiers the great altarpiece with wings, which was finished in 1612, and since 1614 has decorated their altar in the Antwerp Cathedral. The different paintings upon it are the famous Descent from the Cross, the Visitation, the Presentation, and the St. Christopher and a Hermit. Having numerous pupils, and constant demands for original works, Rubens spent eleven years at Antwerp, and then went to Paris in February, 1622, at the call of Maria de' Medici, to decorate the Luxembourg Palace with twenty-one great pictures, now in the Louvre, representing the history of her life up to the period of her reconciliation with her son, Louis XIII. In 1622-23 he returned to Paris to consult