Peter Paul Rubens was born in A.D. 1577, at Siegen in Germany, where his father, Dr. John Rubens, a man of great attainments, was living in disgrace arising out of an old intrigue with the dissolute wife of William the Silent. But for the necessity of shielding the reputation of the House of Orange, there seems no doubt that John Rubens would have paid the death penalty for his offence. It is curious to reflect that, had he done so, Peter Paul would have been lost to the world, for the intrigue would seem to have occurred in the neighbourhood of the year 1570, while Peter Paul was not born until seven years later. When the child was one year old the Rubens family was allowed to return to Cologne, where John Rubens had gone on leaving Antwerp in 1568. Here Peter Paul and his elder brother, Philip, were brought up, in utter ignorance of the misfortunes that had befallen their father, whose death was recorded when his famous son was nine or ten years old. After his decease the boys’ mother decided to return to Antwerp, where her husband in his early days had enjoyed a considerable reputation as a lawyer, and held civic appointments. Although much of the family money must have been lost, perhaps on account of the fall in values resulting from the terrible war with Spain, there would seem to have been enough to enable the widow and her two sons to live in comfort, if not in luxury. Peter Paul was sent to a good school, where he made progress and became very popular, probably because he was strikingly handsome, considerably gifted, and very quick to learn.

At the age of thirteen school-days came to an end, and the boy became a page in the service of the widowed Countess of Lalaing, whose husband had been one of the governors of Antwerp. Here, at a very impressionable age, Rubens obtained first his acquaintance with and finally his mastery over all the intricacies of courtly etiquette. In quite a short time he became a polished gentleman, in the sixteenth-century acceptation of that term. But the instinct to study art already developed made the duties of a page seem tiresome and unattractive, and we learn that the boy importuned his mother to be allowed to study painting. Apparently he had shown sufficient promise to justify the request, and he was placed, first under an unknown painter named Verhaecht and then under Adam van Noort, with whom he remained four years before passing to the studio of Otto van Veen, a scholar, a gentleman, and a painter of quality. The life here would seem to have developed in Rubens many of the qualities that were destined to bring him fame and great rewards. By the time he was twenty, the Guild of St. Luke in Antwerp received him as a member, and a year later he received an appointment from the city to assist his master in some civic decorations. So the glittering years of his first youth passed, happily, prosperously, and uneventfully, and when he was no more than twenty-three Peter Paul Rubens turned his steps towards Italy, then, as Paris is now, the Mecca of the pilgrim of the Arts.

If we wish to find some explanation for the splendid colouring that makes the masterpieces of Rubens the delight of every unprejudiced eye, we may surely be content to remember that he saw Venice with the enthusiastic eye of twenty-three in the year 1600. Even to-day when Venice, vulgarised to the fullest extent that modern ingenuity can accomplish, has become no more than a remnant most forlorn of what it was, it is one of the world’s wonder cities. When the seventeenth century was opening its eventful pages, the memory of wonderful achievements was upon the great city of the Adriatic, it was still a power to be reckoned with. The season of pageants had not passed, and the luck that seemed destined to accompany Rubens throughout his career was in close attendance upon him here. The Duke of Mantua. Vincenzo Gonzaga, saw some of his work, and was so struck by its quality that he sent for the young painter. The man seemed worthy of his creations, and the Duke promptly offered him a position in his suite, an offer too good to be declined. Thereafter the sojourn in Venice was a short one. Mantua, Florence, and Genoa were visited in turn, and in Mantua, after some months travelling to and fro, the Court settled down, and Rubens was enabled to study the splendid collection of works that the city’s rulers had collected. In the late summer of the following year Rubens would seem to have visited Rome, where he faced the terrible heat without any ill effect and devoted himself with untiring energy to a study of the work that is to be seen there and nowhere else. It would appear that he was well received by the leading artists of the day, that he made a friend of Caravaggio, and he was soon commissioned to paint an altar-piece for the Church of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem. The work, done in three parts, is now we believe in the possession of the French Government, and is to be seen in Grasse or one of the neighbouring towns of the Mediterranean littoral. When Rubens’ leave of absence expired—it must not be forgotten that he was in the service of Mantua’s ruler, and was not his own master—he returned to the north, where the Duke would seem to have employed him for a time as an art expert. We may imagine that politics and art were closely connected, and that Rubens soon knew responsibility in connection with both. The work must have been very well done in each case, for rather more than a year later, when it became necessary in the interests of Mantua’s political position to send a message to the King of Spain, Rubens was the chosen envoy.

Nowadays the journey from Mantua to Madrid may be accomplished without extraordinary exertion in forty-eight hours, but three hundred years ago such a journey must have savoured of adventure, more particularly as the painter-diplomat was in charge of the splendid presents sent to Philip by the Duke. Nearly a year passed before Rubens returned to Mantua. His mission executed, he was rewarded with the grant of a regular income, and after executing some more work at home to the complete satisfaction of his patron, he returned to Rome, this time in the company of his brother.

They lived near the Piazza di Spagna, where the Roman models and flower-sellers congregate to this day, and tourists are as the sand upon the sea-shore for multitude. Philip Rubens, smitten by the weakness to which so many men have succumbed before and since, celebrated his journey by writing a book. It was printed by the famous Plantin Press, with one of whose directors Peter Paul had been at school, and was illustrated by the artist. We may suppose that the work Rubens had done in Rome on the occasion of his earlier visit had satisfied its purchasers, for he received another commission for the Chiesa Nuova, but was recalled before it was completed, and taken to Genoa by the Duke of Mantua. However, he soon returned to Rome, where he remained until the close of 1608 and then left for Antwerp, where his mother, who had been living in that city for some years, was dangerously ill. Rubens does not seem to have known how ill she was, for he arrived in Antwerp too late to see her. She was a woman cast in heroic mould, most generous of wives, most devoted of mothers.

Perhaps the shock of her death awoke Rubens to the disadvantages attaching to the paid service of any man, perhaps he was beginning to realise his own quality and to know that he could stand alone. Perhaps he saw, too, that Italy had taught him as much as his years would allow him to assimilate, enough to make a man of mark in Antwerp. We have no certain information on these points, we can do no more than make surmises, but we do know that Rubens wrote to the Duke of Mantua, thanking him for all the favours and marks of confidence that he had received, and acquainting him with his decision to resign from his service. With the return to Antwerp the era that opened with the visit to Venice eight years before comes to a close, and we enter upon the most strenuous period of the artist’s life.