Master of Shadows (18 page)

The iconographic opacity of the paintings came in particularly handy when it was time to show them off to Marie’s son Louis XIII, a task left to the abbé of St. Ambrose, Marie’s adviser. “He served as the interpreter of the subjects,” wrote Rubens, “changing or concealing the true meaning with great skill.” The artist, unfortunately, only heard about the abbé’s suave presentation secondhand, as he
was not there to witness it in person; a clumsy boot maker had injured his foot during a fitting, leaving him bedridden for ten days. No doubt the situation reminded him of his trip to Spain, years earlier, when Iberti had relegated him to the periphery during the presentation of his touched-up Mantuan pictures to Philip III. In any case, the result was the same. Louis “showed complete satisfaction” with the project, and Marie was similarly pleased with her gallery.

Rubens barely escaped another injury during the nuptial ceremony, which he attended with Peiresc’s brother, Palamède Fabri, the sieur de Valavez. The two arranged an excellent position for themselves on a grandstand with members of the English diplomatic contingent, just opposite the platform where the service was to be conducted. There they stood making casual conversation when the oversubscribed grandstand suddenly gave way. Rubens managed to skip away from danger, but Valavez wasn’t so lucky. He tumbled to the ground, taking a wound to the head. He recovered, though the bloodletting and injections administered as therapy probably didn’t help.

It was surely no accident that Rubens appeared on a grandstand with members of the English delegation. In the preceding years he had spent considerable energy cultivating patrons among the English nobility, and he esteemed Charles I to be “the greatest amateur of paintings among the princes of the world.” The term “amateur,” as Rubens used it in its original French, was not derogatory, but suggested the new king’s love and deep knowledge of art. The respect was mutual. Charles had recently acquired a Rubens self-portrait, having done so after imploring the artist so insistently that he had no choice but to accept the honor. Rubens was uncomfortable with the idea of sending his own likeness to a king. It seemed an inappropriate breach of protocol, given his social station and Spanish allegiance; visitors who saw it in Charles’s cabinet might well deem the
artist presumptuous. Also, and perhaps more seriously, he simply didn’t like to paint self-portraits. In the course of a career of extraordinary production, he made only a handful of them, and even those were generally painted on demand or for a special occasion. The enterprise seemed narcissistic to him, immodest. He was not a man prone to the exploration of his mind’s demons—if he had any at all—and he was certainly not one to advertise his innermost thoughts. That said, his pride was such that he was never one to reject an honor. If the king truly wanted his portrait, of course he would oblige.

Charles was actually not present for his own nuptials; it was to be yet another wedding by proxy. A marriage between two royal houses, and this one in particular, was more a political and commercial transaction than a love match, and it was imprudent for the groom to travel to meet his fiancée before the formalization of the marriage contract. To do so would place that entire arrangement in jeopardy: the groom might become ill, injured, or worse while en route; international travel at the time was inherently risky. Moreover, upon arrival he would be, in essence, a hostage in a foreign court.

Charles had learned this lesson the hard way. Two years earlier, he had foolishly departed for Spain while negotiations were still pending for his marriage to the infanta Maria Anna, daughter of Philip III (and niece of the infanta Isabella). Charles, a romantic and impulsive soul, had fallen in love with a portrait of the comely Spanish princess, whom he had never met in person. Despite his better judgment, James I agreed to let his passionate son follow his heart, though he insisted that George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, travel along with Charles as chaperone and chief political aide. Buckingham had by that time established himself as the king’s latest protégé—indeed, they were said to be lovers—a man James felt comfortable trusting with so delicate a mission. That trust, however, was
entirely misplaced. Indeed, the king might have suspected just how much trouble was in store when his ardent son and equally fervent intimate surreptitiously departed London wearing fake beards and using the pseudonyms Jack and Tom Smith, the better to surprise the Spanish princess and win her heart. In Madrid, two months later, the folly of their adventure gradually became apparent.

The Spanish public appreciated the prince’s gallant gesture. To travel incognito across half of Europe in the name of love—that was chivalry. As word of Charles’s presence spread through Madrid’s streets, throngs gathered to voice their approval at the House of Seven Chimneys, the residence of the English ambassador, where he and the duke made camp. There were parades, a tour of the Escorial, and a gift of paintings from the magnificent royal collection, a present that included a portrait by Titian of the prince’s namesake, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. (He also received Giambologna’s
Samson and a Philistine
, previously a gift of political tribute from the Tuscan grand duke Ferdinand de’ Medici to the duke of Lerma.) These ostentatious displays belied the less generous intentions of Spain’s calculating chief minister, Gaspar de Guzmán, the Count-Duke of Olivares. The unannounced arrival of the English prince, a gross breach of diplomatic protocol, gave the count-duke ample pretext to stall the marriage negotiations with Buckingham, during which time he became progressively more insistent on Spanish demands. The count-duke was adamant that Maria Anna, after the wedding, be allowed to freely practice her Catholic faith, despite the general prohibitions against Catholicism in England and the fact that her prospective husband was a Protestant.

Had Charles not rushed off so impetuously, these obstacles might well have been surmounted by his conciliatory father. James was especially desperate for the funds that would come as Maria Anna’s dowry. He also wanted his wayward nephew, Frederick V,
restored as the elector palatine in Germany. That title carried with it sovereignty over a large swath of southeastern Germany, a breadbasket that encompassed key military and economic corridors. Frederick was now in exile in Holland—he was actually living in the home of the English ambassador, Rubens’s friend Dudley Carleton—having been forced from his throne in 1620. In his absence, the Palatinate had been divided among the Holy Roman Emperor, the Duke of Bavaria, and the King of Spain. James thought, and not without reason, that Frederick’s restoration might somehow be finagled as part of a carefully brokered marriage contract.

As it was, Charles and Buckingham, stranded in Madrid, had absolutely no leverage to bargain for Frederick’s return to his German throne. Indeed, the two English aristocrats were now prey to the machinations of the Count-Duke of Olivares, who shrewdly exploited the prince’s infatuation with Maria Anna, teasing him with a glimpse of her here and a peek at her there, until Charles was eyeing her, in the words of the count-duke, “as a cat doth a mouse.” Of course, it was Olivares who had Charles trapped and cornered. The prince was in love, but he was in no position to renounce his own church. Charles’s requests to leave Madrid without a marriage deal in place were denied by Olivares, and as summer approached, James was forced to warn his son, in Shakespearean tones, of “the danger of your life by the coming of the heats.” Finally, Charles had no choice but to agree to Spanish terms, and even then he was not allowed to return to England with his bride. There would be an eight-month wait before her departure, to ensure that the terms of the wedding were properly established in England. Inevitably, after his return home, the prince was forced to renounce the agreement. It was a colossal embarrassment, and a deathblow to Anglo-Spanish relations. Maria Anna, at least, did well for herself. In 1631 she married her cousin Ferdinand III, the future Holy Roman Emperor.

IT WAS WITH THAT HISTORY
in mind that Charles, having learned his lesson, now chose to wait for his French bride at Dover, on the English coast. Buckingham was dispatched to escort the new queen across the Channel, a job that left him with three weeks in Paris waiting on Henrietta Maria. He spent that time actively, for the duke hoped to take more than just a new queen back with him to England. Buckingham had a taste for precious objects and spent a good amount of his time in France trying to procure them. For his garden, he acquired a selection of rare tropical plants. His attempt to liberate the
Mona Lisa
from the royal palace at Fontainebleau, however, was politely refused. Da Vinci’s masterpiece was not for sale, but as some consolation he could have his portrait made by Rubens, a specialist in just the kind of visual aggrandizement that appealed to the duke’s immense ego.

Buckingham dressed carefully for his first sitting with Rubens. He was a man who cared about appearances, and knew that his sartorial choices would shape his image for posterity. He wore an elegant black doublet with scalloped white vents and a high collar that flared out to squared ends edged with lace. His hair fell in gentle brown curls that made for a contrast with his short beard, which was precisely clipped into a plunging spade. He was, in fact, so pleased with the work of his French hairdresser that he paid the man’s employer 100 pounds for the right to acquire his services on a permanent basis. Even without all this careful preparation, the duke was undeniably handsome, with strong, sharp features that attracted men and women alike. King James had called him “Steenie,” a reference to the angelic face of Saint Stephen.

Buckingham was accompanied during that sitting by his aide-de-camp, Balthasar Gerbier, who recorded their conversation and
catered to the duke’s whims, as necessary. Like Rubens, Gerbier was an artist-diplomat—though not quite as skilled in either capacity—and a native of the Low Countries who had fled that land with his parents to escape religious persecution. Formally, he was the duke’s “master of the horse,” a title that dated back to Roman days but now conferred the status of chief court officer. Beady eyes and a sluice of a nose gave Gerbier a squirrelly appearance that mirrored his pushy, ingratiating personality. He was nevertheless an undeniably nimble political operative, and his penchant for sycophancy extended directly to Rubens, whose career he had been tracking for some time. In 1620 he had even authored a sixty-three-line panegyric to the painter, dubbing him “a shining Phoebus.”

It was nice to be esteemed, but Rubens nevertheless approached his meeting with Buckingham with a certain degree of trepidation. It was no great secret that the duke still harbored a resentment over the failed “Spanish match.” The depth of that resentment was of particular concern insofar as Buckingham, chief minister to Charles and lord high admiral of the English navy, was in a position to launch a military offensive against Spain and its dependencies, including Rubens’s Flemish homeland. At the very least, he could increase the English subsidy to the Dutch, to assist them in their war against Spain. Measuring the duke’s level of antipathy, then, was something that fell directly within the purview of the painter, given his role as an agent in the service of Isabella.

As was his practice, Rubens chatted amicably with his subject as he sketched his portrait. Using quick strokes of black and red chalk, which he accentuated with translucent rushes of white, Rubens gradually brought the duke to life. When the drawing was nearly complete, the artist inked in Buckingham’s pupils with brown pen, giving his eyes a sense of forceful animation. A slight pursing of the lips imbued the sitter with a feeling of calculated seriousness, hinting
at arrogance. Rubens had correctly surmised that this was precisely how the duke imagined himself: handsome, commanding, pitiless. Indeed, Buckingham was happy with the result, delighted enough to make it the basis for two formal portraits—one half-length and the other equestrian—to be completed by the painter and his assistants back at his Antwerp studio. For the equestrian portrait alone he agreed to pay 500 pounds. The duke also commissioned from Rubens a ceiling painting for the ceremonial hall of his new home in London, York House. Finally, the duke had learned of the unsurpassed collection of antiquities Rubens had amassed back at his Antwerp home. Might the painter be convinced to part with it, he wondered?

Rubens was shrewd enough, both as a businessman and as a diplomatic operative, to see that Buckingham’s interest might be leveraged into both financial and political capital. Yes, he told the duke, he would be interested in selling, given an appropriate offer. If the duke would like to inspect the marbles, he was of course welcome to do so, or he could have a local representative make an inventory. With that established, Rubens gently nudged the discussion to the delicate matter of politics. The artist admitted his concern that “great difficulties might arise between the Crowns of Spain and Great Britain” and then suggested that “every honest man should do all in his power” to ensure peace. “Since war was a scourge from Heaven, we should do our best to avoid it,” he told the duke. Rubens made a special point to note that Flanders and its regent, the infanta Isabella, were truly innocent bystanders to any conflict between Spain and England. The painter therefore hoped Buckingham would use his influence to “pacify” Charles, the new English king, and otherwise curb his desire for retribution—though he did not say so explicitly.