Authors: Mark Lamster
All this was beginning to dawn on him, however, when he found himself standing uncomfortably in an opulent Pisan receiving room before Vincenzo’s uncle Ferdinand I de’ Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany. This was in late March 1603, when he was already three weeks into his long-delayed journey. Rubens recognized Ferdinand’s shrewd countenance; he had seen him in person a few years earlier, at the proxy wedding of Henry IV and Marie de’ Medici in Florence. But that viewing was from a distance only. This audience was something altogether more intimate, and Rubens was grateful that Ferdinand opened it with a disarmingly friendly introduction. The grand duke politely inquired as to the painter’s background and his purpose in Pisa, a long distance and a difficult mountain passage from his patron’s Mantuan palace. Rubens offered the truth, though he went light on the details of his mission; he was in no position to discuss Vincenzo’s affairs with another prince, no matter their relation. The grand duke nodded. In fact, the question was a con. He knew precisely who Rubens was, where he was going, why he was going there, and what he was carrying along
with him. To demonstrate this knowledge, he cut Rubens off in midstream and proceeded, in rather bemused fashion, to rattle off the entire extravagant catalog headed for Philip III—every last item, down to the final whalebone harquebus. It was an impressive performance, and it concluded with the grand duke “asking” that Rubens add two more articles to the manifest: a horse and a marble table to be deposited with one of the grand duke’s own allies at Alicante, on the Iberian coast. What could Rubens do but say yes?
Back at his room in the aftermath, Rubens sent off a dispatch to Chieppio in which he described the meeting in some detail. “I stood there like a dunce, suspecting some informer, or in truth the excellent system of reporters (not to say spies) in the very palace of our prince,” he wrote. “It could not be otherwise, for I have not specified my baggage, either at the customs or elsewhere. Perhaps it is my simplicity which causes me astonishment at things that are ordinary at court. Pardon me, and read, as a pastime, the report of a novice without experience, considering only his good intention to serve his patrons, and particularly yourself.” If things had not gone according to plan, at least he might try to ingratiate himself with his superiors.
Rubens’s plea of naive innocence was disingenuous, for at the very least he should have anticipated what was to transpire at that meeting. He had, in fact, already agreed to take on the grand duke’s horse two days earlier, when he was approached by a fellow Antwerp native in Ferdinand’s employ. Had he let slip with one too many details during their conversation? Probably not, but the assertion in his letter to Chieppio that he had not “specified” his baggage was patently false. If Rubens was surprised at all, it might have been that the grand duke was willing to trust him with his horse in the first place, given that his journey from Mantua to Pisa had been something of a fiasco from its very outset, and its tortured progress
no great secret in the halls of Tuscan power. This was probably on Ferdinand’s mind as well, but the audience with Rubens had been called less as a test of the painter’s competence than as a message to his Mantuan nephew, Vincenzo. Ferdinand was not prepared to simply cede his role as Italian arbiter of cultural authority to the Spanish crown. Just two years earlier, Ferdinand had sent his own immense gift to Lerma: a marble fountain capped by a statue of Samson slaying a Philistine. This masterpiece was the work of the sculptor Giambologna, himself a Flemish transplant to Italy. Now Vincenzo’s gift would pass, but not without Ferdinand’s tacit approval.
Rubens’s journey from Mantua to Pisa had in fact been such an amateurish farce that any number of sources could have provided Ferdinand with information on its bungled early stages. At Ferrara, the convoy’s first stop, customs officials had insisted upon opening for inspection each of the seven trunks in the shipment, not counting the plainly visible horses and carriage. (Rubens, who could be obsessive about his reputation, conveniently neglected to mention this when he had asserted that his luggage had not been inspected.) The Ferrarese presented Rubens with a duty so large that it exceeded the entire projected cost of the trip to Spain. Vincenzo might have sent along a formal request that the cargo be exempted from such levies, but he considered it beneath his dignity to do so; that would have looked cheap. Instead, Rubens was provided with a packet of letters of introduction, and forced to scurry about begging the intercession of local figures of influence with ties to the duke. Acting nimbly, he managed to free the cargo, but the scene was rehearsed again at Bologna, the next stop, where authorities were satisfied by what was generously described as a “tip,” and once again in Florence, after an arduous trek over the Apennines.
The drive over the mountains was particularly expensive and
time-consuming. Rubens was forced to commission oxen to pull the luggage through the muddy Apennine passes, with their narrow switchbacks and steep inclines. The Tuscan vistas were spectacular—when they were visible through the rain and fog—but the cost for hauling the carriage alone was enormous, and that was without the protective cart built to carry it, which had to be left behind. Upon arrival at Florence, things didn’t much improve. When Rubens presented his credentials, he was met by looks of bewilderment. What was he doing in Florence? Why hadn’t he taken the direct route from Mantua to the port of Genoa? “They almost crossed themselves in their astonishment at such a mistake,” Rubens observed. Instead, incompetent Mantuan court functionaries, perhaps jealous of his mission, had sent him on a circuitous fool’s errand southeast through Tuscany, forcing a needlessly difficult mountain crossing. Worse still, he might sit idle and bleeding funds for three or four months waiting for a ship to Spain at Pisa, whereas service out of Genoa was far more dependable.
The delay with the carriage and spring flooding along the route to the coast kept Rubens in Florence for ten days. When he did reach Pisa, at least there was good news: a fleet of ships from Hamburg happened to be in port and en route to Alicante. He booked passage, but now there was an additional problem. It was Rubens’s understanding that once he arrived in Spain, the ride to Madrid would take roughly three days. Once again, even a brief glance at a map would have shown quite clearly that on this he had been badly sold by his handlers in Mantua. (No small irony, given that the astronomer and cartographer Giovanni Antonio Magini was a Mantuan court resident and had been working on an atlas of greater Italy for ten years.) The journey was actually some 280 miles—a good two weeks in travel time—and the funds with which he had been provided would not suffice. Vincenzo’s precious
horses, bathed regularly in wine to maintain their lustrous coats, could not be pressed, lest they appear worn out at their presentation to the king. Frustrated, Rubens wrote to Chieppio asking for additional funds, while promising to spend his own salary until he could be reimbursed. “No one can accuse me of negligence or extravagance; my clearly balanced accounts will prove the contrary,” he wrote. “I beg you to favor me by informing His Highness freely of everything, or by having him read this letter.” A few moments later he thought better of this presumptuous request and tacked on a postscript: “It would be better for me if you were to make a verbal report; the letter in certain places may exceed the limits of modesty and reverence for His Highness.”
The journey across the Mediterranean was slow but uneventful, and for a while it seemed that luck had turned in favor of the young painter. At Alicante, he consigned the horse and table of the grand duke without difficulty. But he also learned that the overland trip across Spain, which was already going to be weeks longer than expected, was to be longer even still. The Spanish court was not in Madrid; since 1601, it had been removed to Valladolid, several days to the northwest over difficult terrain. That shift, which lasted five years, had come at the bidding of Lerma, whose intention was to isolate Philip III from the chattering political busybodies of Madrid, and thereby enhance his own influence.
The trek from Alicante to Valladolid was a twenty-day slog through wind and rain that matched all the difficulty of the crossing of the Italian boot. And when Rubens finally did arrive at the residence of Annibale Iberti, Vincenzo’s Spanish ambassador, he was greeted by another surprise. Philip wasn’t in town. Earlier on the same day, the king had departed on a rabbit-hunting expedition into the nearby hills. At least he’d be back soon. Satisfied with himself, Rubens composed a missive to Vincenzo. “I hope that for
this first mission which Your Serene Highness has condescended to entrust me, a kind fate will grant me your satisfaction, if not complete, at least in part,” he wrote. “And if some action of mine should displease you, whether excessive expenditure or anything else, I beseech and implore you to postpone reproach until the time and place when I may be permitted to explain its unavoidable necessity.”
Alas, the note was written with something less than absolute candor. Ambassador Iberti, it seems, had not been expecting Rubens and his gift horses, and he was not pleased at their arrival—and in a bedraggled state at that. One of the grooms charged with administering the equine wine baths was nearly dead with a fever contracted on the journey, and would only last out the week. Iberti could not have been happy to welcome that contagion into his house, and was perhaps even less pleased to learn about the rather large debt Rubens had accrued along the way, for which he would now be responsible. The costs of the journey had grown to 500 ducats, 200 of which Rubens had fronted out of his own salary (in the neighborhood of 300 ducats per year), with another 300 borrowed from a merchant banker in Valladolid. “I regret that I am poor and have not the resources to correspond to my good will,” he wrote to Chieppio. “If this repayment of my loan is made promptly, I shall be grateful; I do not ask it as a gift or reward, as others may pretend I do.” Presumably, he meant Iberti. Rubens, a craftsman from a burgher family in Antwerp, could hardly be expected to finance his own mission.
Debt was the least of his problems. A week after Rubens’s own damp arrival in Valladolid, the shipment carrying the paintings and vases, delayed by the inclement weather, finally made it to Iberti’s door. Rubens opened the cases for inspection, only to be sickened by what he found: “Malicious fate is jealous of my too great satisfaction.”
He had hand packed the paintings himself back in Mantua, lovingly wrapping them in oilskin before placing them in tin casings and airtight wooden chests. At Alicante, he had checked the contents to make sure everything had survived the sea journey, and found all to his satisfaction. But now the paintings were practically ruined beyond repair, “so damaged and spoiled that I almost despair of being able to restore them,” he wrote, adding, “I am in no way exaggerating.” It had been the rain, the three steady weeks of it. Dampness seeped through all of his careful packing, and the result was a mess of rotted canvas, faded color, and flaking paint.
As a remedy, Iberti pressed Rubens to do what repainting he could with the assistance of a team of Spanish artists, and to then slap together a half-dozen woodland scenes as replacements, ideas Rubens greeted with little enthusiasm. Rubens was not particularly impressed with the local Spanish talent, a fact he made clear in no uncertain terms in a letter to Chieppio. “God keep me from resembling them in any way!” A hasty job wasn’t going to fool anyone, especially a well-known connoisseur like Lerma. “I am convinced that, by its freshness alone, the work must necessarily be discovered as done here,” he wrote, “whether by the hands of such men, or by mine, or by a mixture of theirs and mine (which I will never tolerate, for I have always guarded against being confused with anyone, however great a man). And I shall be disgraced unduly by an inferior production unworthy of my reputation.”
If Rubens’s reaction to Iberti’s meddling was particularly sharp, it was because he found the ambassador’s attitude in regard to his Flemish artistic pedigree offensive. Iberti’s suggestion that Rubens toss off a few genre scenes for Lerma stank of the longstanding Italian prejudice that Flemish painters were capable only of cloying devotional pictures, fussy portraits, and the occasional landscape, but nothing more ambitious. Michelangelo summed
up this general perception in a rambling disquisition published in 1548:
Flemish painting … will appeal to women, especially to the very old and the very young, and also to monks and nuns and to certain noblemen who have no sense of true harmony. They paint stuffs and masonry. The green grass of the fields, the shadow of the trees, and rivers and bridges, which they call landscapes, with many figures on this side and many figures on that. And all this, though it pleases some persons, is done without reason or art, without symmetry or proportion, without skilful choice of boldness and, finally, without substance or vigor. Nevertheless there are countries where they paint worse than in Flanders. And I do not speak ill of Flemish painting because it is all bad but because it attempts to do so many things (each one of which would suffice for greatness) that it does none well.
When it came to the backhanded compliment, Michelangelo was no less skilled than he was with a block of granite. Rubens, of course, did not share the Renaissance master’s opinion. If he had any one great aspiration for his artistic career, it was to forever obliterate such preconceived notions, and he would do so, in part, by synthesizing the strengths of the Italian tradition—its muscularity in composition and figure, its boldness in color and execution—with the meticulous pictorial description so characteristic of art from the Netherlands.
The good news was that the situation wasn’t quite so dire as Rubens and Iberti initially feared. Though Rubens claimed no exaggeration in his description of the damage done to the paintings, and may have been forthright in that immediate assessment, after
giving them some time to dry out in the sun, and after a gentle cleaning and retouching, he was able to resurrect all but two of the works. These he replaced with one of his own compositions, making no secret of his authorship. This was a double portrait of the Greek philosophers Democritus and Heraclitus standing over a globe, a conventional pairing that typically contrasted the joyful Democritus, amused by the folly of man, with a more compassionate and teary-eyed Heraclitus. But Rubens’s bearded Democritus seemed somewhat more pensive than joyful, and his wizened Heraclitus more circumspect than weepy. Grand in theme, it was a clear rebuke to Iberti and an overt demonstration of Rubens’s capabilities as both a painter and a man of learning. It was also a perfect selection for a cagey statesman like Lerma, and perhaps also an allusion to the bond between Mantua and Spain (represented by the two philosophers with the world between them) that Vincenzo’s whole gift-giving enterprise was intended to reinforce in the first place.