The father of this great painter was a magistrate of Antwerp, who, during the desperate struggle of the Netherlands to shake off the dominion of Spain, retired from his own city to Cologne, to escape from the miseries of war. There, in the year 1577, Peter Paul Rubens was born. At an early age he gave indications of superior abilities, and his education was conducted with suitable care. The elder Rubens returned to Antwerp with his family, when that city passed again into the hands of Spain. It was the custom of that age to domesticate the sons of honourable families in the houses of the nobility, where they were instructed in all the accomplishments becoming a gentleman: and in conformity with it, young Rubens entered as a page into the service of the Countess of Lalain. The restraint and formality of this life ill suited his warm imagination and active mind: and on his father’s death, he obtained permission from his mother to commence his studies as a painter under Tobias Verhaecht, by whom he was taught the principles of landscape painting, and of architecture. But Rubens wished to become an historical painter, and he entered the school of Adam Van Oort, who was then eminent in that branch of art. This man possessed great talents, but they were degraded by a brutal temper and profligate habits, and Rubens soon left him in disgust. His next master was Otho Van Veen, or Venius, an artist in almost every respect the opposite of Van Oort, distinguished by scholastic acquirements as well as professional skill, of refined manners, and amiable disposition. Rubens was always accustomed to speak of him with great respect and affection, nor was it extraordinary that he should have conceived a cordial esteem for a man whose character bore so strong a resemblance to his own. From Venius, Rubens imbibed his fondness for allegory; which, though in many respects objectionable, certainly contributes to the magnificence of his style. In 1600, after having studied four years under this master, he visited Italy, bearing letters of recommendation from Albert, governor of the Netherlands, by whom he had already been employed, to Vincenzio Gonzaga, duke of Mantua. He was received by that prince with marked distinction, and appointed one of the gentlemen of his chamber. He remained at Mantua two years, during which time he executed several original pictures, and devoted himself attentively to the study of the works of Giulio Romano.

In passing through Venice, Rubens had been deeply impressed with the great works of art which he saw there. He had determined to revisit that city on the first opportunity, and at length obtained permission from his patron to do so. In the Venetian school his genius found its proper aliment; but it is perhaps to Paul Veronese that he is principally indebted. He looked at Titian, no doubt, with unqualified admiration; but Titian has on all occasions, a dignity and sedateness not congenial to the gay temperament of Rubens. In Paul Veronese he found all the elements of his subsequent style; gaiety, magnificence, fancy disdainful of restraint, brilliant colouring, and that masterly execution by which an almost endless variety of objects are blended into one harmonious whole. Three pictures painted for the church of the Jesuits immediately after his return to Mantua, attested how effectually he had prosecuted his studies at Venice. He then developed those powers which afterwards established his reputation, and secured to him a distinction which he still holds without a competitor, that of being the best imitator, and most formidable rival of the Venetian school.

Rome, with its exhaustless treasures of art, was still before him, and he was soon gratified with an opportunity of visiting that capital. The Duke of Mantua wished to obtain copies of some of the finest pictures there, and he engaged Rubens to make them, with the double motive of availing himself of his talents and facilitating his studies. This task was doubtless rendered light to Rubens, as well by gratitude towards his patron as by his own great facility of execution. In this respect Sir J. Reynolds considers him superior to all other painters; and says that he was “perhaps the greatest master in the mechanical part of his art, the best workman with his tools, that ever handled a pencil.” He executed for the Duke copies of several great works, which could scarcely be distinguished from the originals. Among his own compositions, painted while at Rome, the most conspicuous are three in the church of S. Croce in Gerusalemme, two of which, Christ bearing the Cross, and the Crucifixion, are considered to rank among his finest productions. There is also, in the Campidoglio, a picture painted by him at this time, of the finding of Romulus and Remus, a work of remarkable spirit and beauty.

Rubens, however, had formed his style at Venice, and was not induced by the contemplation of the great works at Rome to alter it in any essential particular. It is not thence to be inferred that he was insensible to the wonders which surrounded him at Rome; that he did not appreciate the epic sublimity of Michael Angelo, the pure intelligence of Raphael; his admiration of ancient sculpture is attested by his written precepts. Of the antique, certainly, no trace of imitation is to be found in his works; but perhaps the bold style of design, which he had adopted in opposition to the meagre taste of his German predecessors, was confirmed by the swelling outlines of Michael Angelo. If he imitated Raphael in any thing, it was in composition; and if in that great quality of art he has any superior, it is in Raphael alone.

The opinion which the Duke of Mantua had formed of Rubens’s general powers was now evinced in an extraordinary manner. Having occasion, in 1605, to send an envoy to Spain, he selected Rubens for the purpose, and directed him to return immediately from Rome to Mantua, in order to set out on his embassy. The young artist succeeded equally well as a diplomatist, and as a painter. He executed a portrait of the King, who honoured him with flattering marks of distinction, and he fully accomplished the object of his mission. Shortly after his return to Mantua he revisited Rome, where he contributed three pictures to the church of S. Maria in Vallicella. In these the imitation of Paul Veronese is particularly conspicuous. He next went to Genoa, where he executed several important works, and was regarded in that city with an interest and respect commensurate to his high reputation. In the midst of this splendid career, Rubens received intelligence that his mother, from whom he had been absent eight years, lay dangerously ill. He hastened to Antwerp, but she had expired before his arrival. The death of this affectionate parent afflicted him so severely, that he determined to quit a city fraught with painful associations, and to take up his future residence in Italy. But the Duke Albert, and the Infanta Isabella, being anxious to retain him in their own territory, he was induced to relinquish his intention, and finally settled at Antwerp.

There he continued to practise during several years, and enriched Europe, the Low Countries especially, with a surprising number of pictures almost uniform in excellence. His style, indeed, with all its admirable qualities, was one in which the delicacies of form and expression were never allowed to stand in the way of despatch. His mode of working was to make small sketches, slightly but distinctly; these were delivered to his scholars, who executed pictures from them on a larger scale, which they carried forward almost to the final stage, at which Rubens took them up himself. Thus his own labour was given only to invention and finishing, the only parts of the art in which the painter’s genius is essentially exercised. Wherever his works were dispersed, the demand for them increased, and fortune poured in on him in a golden flood. Rubens’s mode of living at Antwerp was the beau idÉal of a painter’s existence. His house was embellished with such a collection of works of art, pictures, statues, busts, vases, and other objects of curiosity and elegance, as gave it the air of a princely museum. In the midst of these he pursued his labours, and it was his constant practice while painting to have read to him works of ancient or modern literature in various languages. It is a strong testimony to the variety of his powers, and the cultivation of his mind, that he was well skilled in seven different tongues. His splendid establishment comprehended a collection of wild beasts, which he kept as living models for those hunting pieces, and other representations of savage animals, which have never been surpassed. Such talents and such success could not fail of exciting envy; a cabal headed by Schut, Jansens, and Rombouts, endeavoured to detract from his reputation, and it is amusing to find him accused, among other deficiencies, of wanting invention! His great picture of the Descent from the Cross, painted for the Cathedral of Antwerp, and exhibited while the outcry against him was at its height, effectually allayed it. Snyders and Wildens were answered in a similar manner. They had insinuated that the chief credit of Rubens’s landscapes and animals was due to their assistance. Rubens painted several lion and tiger hunts, and other similar works, entirely with his own hand, which he did not permit to be seen until they were completed. In these works he even surpassed his former productions; they were executed with a truth power, and energy, which excited universal astonishment, and effectually put his adversaries to silence. Rubens condescended to give no other reply to his calumniators; and he showed his own goodness of heart, by finding employment for those among them whom he understood to be in want of it.

In 1628 he was commissioned by Mary de Medici, Queen of France, to adorn the gallery of the Luxembourg with a set of pictures, twenty-four in number, illustrative of the events of her life. Within three years he completed this magnificent series, in which allegory mingles with history, and the immense variety of actors, human and superhuman, with appropriate accompaniments, lays open a boundless field to the imagination of the artist. The largest of these pictures, which is the Coronation of Mary de Medici, combines with the gorgeous colouring proper to the subject, a correctness and chastity of design seldom attained by Rubens, and is consequently an example of that high excellence which might be expected from his style when divested of its imperfections. The gallery of the Luxembourg, as long as it possessed those ornaments, was considered one of the wonders of Europe. The pictures are now removed to the Louvre, and are seen perhaps with diminished effect, among the mass of miscellaneous works with which they are surrounded.

The two last of the Luxembourg series Rubens finished in Paris. On his return to the Netherlands his political talents were again called into requisition, and he was despatched by the Infanta Isabella to Madrid, to receive instructions preparatory to a negotiation for peace between Spain and England. Philip IV., and the Duke de Olivarez, his minister, received him with every demonstration of regard, nor did they neglect to avail themselves of his professional skill. The King engaged him to paint four pictures of large dimensions for the Convent of Carmelites, near Madrid, recently founded by Olivarez, to whom Philip presented those magnificent works. The subjects were the Triumph of the New Law, Abraham and Melchizedec, the four Evangelists, and the four Doctors of the Church, with their distinctive emblems. He also painted a series of pictures for the great Saloon of the Palace at Madrid, which represent the Rape of the Sabines, the Battle between the Romans and Sabines, the Bath of Diana, Perseus and Andromeda, the Rape of Helen, the Judgment of Paris, and the Triumph of Bacchus. The Judgment of Paris is now in the possession of Mr. Penrice, of Great Yarmouth, and may be considered one of the finest of Rubens’s smaller pictures; the figures being half the size of life. The King rewarded him munificently, and conferred on him the honour of knighthood.

Rubens returned to Flanders in 1627, and had no sooner rendered an account of his mission to the Infanta, than he was sent by that princess to England in order to sound the Government on the subject of a peace with Spain, the chief obstacle to which had been removed by the death of the Duke of Buckingham. It is probable that Rubens’s extraordinary powers as an artist formed one motive for employing him in those diplomatic functions. The monarchs to whose courts he was sent were passionate admirers of art; and the frequent visits which they made to Rubens in his painting room, and the confidence with which they honoured him, gave him opportunities, perhaps, in his double capacity, of obviating political difficulties, which might not otherwise have been so easily overcome. This was certainly the case in his negotiations with Charles I. He was not, it appears, formally presented in the character of an envoy. But the monarch received him with all the consideration due to his distinguished character; and it was while he was engaged on the paintings at Whitehall, the progress of which the King delighted to inspect, that he disclosed the object of his visit, and produced his credentials. This he did with infinite delicacy and address; and the King was by no means indisposed to listen to his proposals. A council was appointed to negotiate with him on the subject of a pacification, which was soon after concluded. It was on this occasion that Rubens painted and presented to the King the picture of Peace and War, which is now in our National Gallery. The relation of that work to the object of his mission is obvious: the blessings of peace in contradistinction to the miseries of war are beautifully illustrated; and whether Rubens paid this compliment to the King while his negotiations were in progress, or after they were terminated, a more elegant and appropriate gift was never addressed by a minister to a monarch. The painter was splendidly remunerated, and honoured with knighthood by Charles in 1630. The object of his mission being happily accomplished, he returned to the Netherlands, where he was received with the distinction due to his splendid genius and successful services.

His various and incessant labours appear to have prematurely broken his constitution; he had scarcely attained his fifty-eighth year when he was attacked by gout with more than usual severity. This painful disease was succeeded by a general debility, which obliged him to desist from the execution of large works, to relinquish all public business, and even to limit his correspondence to his particular friends, and a few distinguished artists. His letters, however, when he touches on the subject of art, rise into a strain of animated enthusiasm. He continued to work, but chiefly on small subjects, till the year 1640, when he died at the age of sixty-three. He was interred with great splendour in the church of St. James, under the altar of his private chapel, which he had ornamented with one of his finest pictures. A monument was erected to his memory by his widow and children, with an epitaph descriptive of his distinguished talents, the functions he had filled, and the honours with which he had been rewarded.

In extent of range the pencil of Rubens is unrivalled. History, portrait, landscape under the aspect of every season, animal life in every form, are equally familiar to him. His hunting pieces especially, wherein lions, tigers, and other wild animals, with men, dogs, and horses, are depicted under all the circumstances of fierce excitement, momentary action, and complicated foreshortenings, are wonderful. Rubens wanted only a purer style in designing the human figure, to have been a perfect, as well as a universal painter. His taste in this particular is singularly unlike that which the habits of his life seemed likely to produce. He had been bred up in scenes of courtly elegance, and he was acquainted with whatever was beautiful in art; yet his conception of character, especially in relation to feminine beauty, betrays a singular want of refinement. His goddesses, nymphs, and heroines are usually fat, middle-aged ladies, sometimes even old and ugly; and they always retain the peculiarities of individual models. His men too, though not without an air of portly grandeur, want mental dignity. Faults of such magnitude would have ruined the fame of almost any other painter; but while the pictures of Rubens are before us, it is hard to criticise severely their defects. If, as a colourist, he is inferior to Titian, it is, perhaps, rather in kind than in degree: Titian’s colouring may be compared to the splendour of the summer sun; that of Rubens excites the exhilarating sensations of a spring morning. It is true that the artifice of his system is sometimes too apparent, whereas, in Titian, it is wholly concealed; Rubens, however, painted for a darker atmosphere, and adapted the effect of his pictures to the light in which they were likely to be seen. Inferior to Raphael in elegance and purity of composition, he competes with him in fertility and clearness of arrangement. He drew from Paul Veronese a general idea of diffused and splendid effect, but he superadded powers of pathos and expression, to which that artist was a stranger. It is, as Reynolds justly observes, only in his large works that the genius of Rubens is fully developed; in these he appears as the Homer of his art, dazzling and astonishing with poetic conception, with grandeur, and energy, and executive power.

Of Rubens’s personal character we may speak in terms of high praise. He bore his great reputation without pride or presumption; he was amiable in his domestic relations, courteous and affable to all. He was the liberal encourager of merit, especially in his own art, and he repaid those among his contemporaries who aspersed him, by endeavouring to serve them. His own mind was uncontaminated by envy, for which perhaps little credit will be given him, conscious, as he must have been, of his own most extraordinary endowments. His noble admission, however, of Titian’s superiority, when he copied one of his works at Madrid, attests the magnanimity of his disposition; and his almost parental kindness to his pupil, Vandyke, shows that he was equally willing to recognize the claims, and to promote the success of living genius.

Rubens’s greatest works are at Antwerp, Cologne, Paris, Munich, and Madrid. The paintings at Whitehall might have formed a noble monument of his powers, but they have suffered both from neglect and reparation. There are smaller works of his in the National Gallery, the Dulwich Gallery, and in almost every private collection in this country.

The best memoir of Rubens with which we are acquainted is in La Vie des Peintres Flamands, par Descamps. Notices may also be found in the AbrÉgÉ de la Vie des Peintres, par De Piles. There is an English life in Bryan’s Dictionary of Painters.