Rubens' 'Consequences of War'

The Catholic Thing

By Brad Miner
But first a note: Be sure to tune in tomorrow night - Thursday, October 17th at 8 PM Eastern - to EWTN for a new episode of the Papal Posse - and for all of October, it's Synod Central - on 'The World Over.' TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal and contributor Fr. Gerald E. Murray will join host Raymond Arroyo to discuss the ongoing second Synod on Synodality now underway and other developments in the Universal Church. Check your local listings for the channel in your area. Shows are usually available shortly after first airing on the EWTN YouTube channel.
Now today's column....
Peter Paul Rubens was a Catholic painter. He was not the most Catholic of Catholic painters, but he was likely the most catholic, as will become clear below.
One thinks of religious artists (i.e., male and female clerics) such as Fra Angelico, Fra Bartolomeo, and Sister Plautilla Nelli - artists whose lives were dedicated not just to painting but also to poverty, chastity, and obedience.
By contrast, Rubens was a wealthy, twice-married man (his first wife died), obedient to the Faith. The case may be made that he was the greatest Baroque-era painter, although the case can also be made that it was Caravaggio. And there's also no question that Rubens admired Caravaggio's work and was much influenced by it.
One difference between them was their productivity: Caravaggio produced fewer than 100 paintings that we know of; Rubens' output (according to expert Michael Jaffé) was 1,403 works. Partly, that has to do with longevity: Rubens died at 62; Caravaggio at 38.
The Baroque period is generally dated from 1600 to 1725. According to Britannica:
Some of the qualities most frequently associated with the Baroque are grandeur, sensuous richness, drama, vitality, movement, tension, emotional exuberance, and a tendency to blur distinctions between the various arts.
If you know the work of Caravaggio and Rubens, you know the best of the Baroque. Of course, there are Rembrandt, Vermeer, Poussin, van Dyck, Velázquez, de La Tour, and others.
In music, Bach, Vivaldi, and Handel top the best-of-Baroque list of composers. And in architecture, the list would be. . .Bernini. Same for sculpture.
Rubens' life reveals the complicated political and religious realities of the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe. Many think of him as a Dutch painter, but when he was born in Siegen, the city was part of the Holy Roman Empire in what today is Germany. Rubens died in Antwerp, which was then the Spanish Netherlands and today is Belgium's second-largest city.
Rubens' parents, Jan and Maria, were among the social and economic elite in Antwerp. Jan was a lawyer who held important positions in the city from an early age. And he was also something of a financial wizard, which led to his rise and fall.
William the Silent (a.k.a. William of Orange), one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the Netherlands, hired Jan to manage the finances of his new wife, Anna of Saxony. So, Jan took his wife and moved to Siegen to be available to Anna.
In a monumental lapse into sin and poor judgment, Jan and Anna had an affair, she became pregnant, and Jan found himself under arrest and fearing execution. This was in 1571. Peter Paul was born in 1577. Jan died in 1587, and three years later, Maria moved back to Antwerp with Peter Paul and his siblings. They were poor by then; Jan's transgressions having cost them dearly.
In 1592, Peter Paul (hereafter Rubens) began an apprenticeship with Tobias Verhaecht, a landscape artist. He soon left that position to work with Adam van Noort, whose work focused more on grand historical scenes. Van Noort had studied in Rome and was familiar with the work of the great Renaissance artists.
But it was with his third, and very sophisticated, teacher, Otto van Veen - another "Romanist" painter - that Rubens began to get more advanced artistic training and a taste for diplomacy; at first likely as a means of approaching the wealthy and powerful from whom he mig...