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قراءة كتاب Rubens
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
Rubens
BY S. L. BENSUSAN
ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT
REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.
CONTENTS
| Page | ||
| I. | Introduction | 11 |
| II. | The Painter’s Life | 21 |
| III. | Second Period | 35 |
| IV. | The Later Years | 45 |
| V. | The Painter’s Art | 55 |
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
| Plate | ||
| I. | Elizabeth of France, Daughter of Henry IV. | Frontispiece |
| In the Louvre | ||
| Page | ||
| II. | Christ à la Paille | 14 |
| At Antwerp Museum | ||
| III. | The Four Philosophers | 24 |
| In the Pitti Palace, Florence | ||
| IV. | Isabella Brandt | 34 |
| In the Wallace Collection | ||
| V. | Le Chapeau de Paille | 40 |
| In the National Gallery | ||
| VI. | The Descent from the Cross | 50 |
| In the Cathedral, Antwerp | ||
| VII. | Henry IV. leaving for a Campaign | 60 |
| In the Louvre | ||
| VIII. | The Virgin and the Holy Innocents | 70 |
| In the Louvre |
I
INTRODUCTION
The name of Peter Paul Rubens is written so large in the history of European art, that all the efforts of detractors have failed to stem the tide of appreciation that flows towards it. Rubens was a great master in nearly every pictorial sense of the term; and if at times the coarseness and lack of restraint of his era were reflected upon his canvas, we must blame the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries rather than the man who worked through some of their most interesting years, and at worst was no more than a realist. There may have been seasons when he elected to attempt more than any man could hope to achieve. There were times when he set himself to work deliberately to express certain scenes, romantic or mythological, in a fashion that must have startled his contemporaries and gives offence to-day; but to do justice to the painter, we must consider his work as a whole, we must set the best against the worst.
(At Antwerp Museum)
Whatever the Biblical story Rubens chose, he handled it not only with skill, but with a certain sense of conviction that is the more remarkable in one who owed no allegiance to the Church. There is fine feeling and deep reverence in the “Christ à la Paille,” in addition to the dramatic feeling that accompanied all his religious pictures. The colouring, though very bold, is most effective; in the hands of a less skilled painter such a display of primary colouring might well have seemed violent or even vulgar.
Consider the vast range of achievements that embraced landscape, portraiture, and decorative work, giving to every subject such quality of workmanship and skill in composition, as none save a very few of the world’s great masters have been able to convey to canvas. And let it be remembered, too, that Rubens was not only a painter, he was a statesman and a diplomat; and amid cares and anxieties that might well have filled the life of any smaller man, he found time to paint countless pictures in every style, and to move steadily forward along the road to mastery, so that his second period is better than the first, in which he was, if the expression