Master of Shadows (22 page)

Rubens would need Gerbier’s assistance in making his summit meeting happen, and in particular he would need Gerbier’s help if he was to be permitted to attend the proceedings—something he considered essential. He specifically asked that Gerbier have Buckingham write back, and in doing so state that “His Excellency desires that I be sent, with the permission of my superiors, to the place where I can meet you under the favorable circumstance of the presence of Carleton and Scaglia.” If Rubens had overstepped his authority in Paris, his conduct here was far out of line, and he knew it. The painter was, on his own and without any authority, orchestrating a meeting with an enemy power on a matter critical to the foreign policy of the Spanish crown, and he was surreptitiously
requesting a foreign statesman demand his participation in the affair. “Keep this request of mine secret, so that no one may ever know that this was done at my instruction,” he wrote to Gerbier. In a postscript he added, “I beg you burn this letter as soon as you have made use of it, for it could ruin me with my masters, even though it contains no harm. But at least it would spoil my credit with them, and render me useless for the future.” At the very least.

RUBENS’S DANGEROUS GAMBIT
paid off. At the end of May, Gerbier and Carleton were dispatched to The Hague. Scaglia soon followed. On June 13, Carleton wrote to Edward Conway, the English secretary of state, assuring him that “Rubens pasport is graunted him, so we are likely to see him here quickly.” He later confirmed that the passport had been issued on the pretext that Rubens was traveling to deal in matters relating to his art.

In fact, it would be more than a month before Rubens would make it onto Dutch soil. The delay was due, in part, to the anticipated arrival in Brussels of Don Diego Messia, one of Philip’s chief ministers. He was carrying with him news “of the greatest consequence,” according to the painter, ostensibly concerning the funding of the Spanish war effort against the Dutch. Messia, who was engaged to Spinola’s daughter, would also be coming with wide latitude and authority from Philip to orchestrate negotiations on behalf of Spain, though he would presumably defer to his future father-in-law, the hero of Breda.

From an English perspective, word of Messia’s pending arrival did not bode well. Carleton, an old diplomatic hand, was inherently wary of Messia’s intervention, and his own contacts in the Dutch diplomatic community confirmed those suspicions. At the beginning of July, he wrote to Conway in London to express his
concern: “I must lett your Lord understand that such advises as are come of late dayes from Bruxells to the Prince of Orange from such secret intelligencers as they here relye upon, all concurre that howsoever there is good affection in those parts to pacification, out of Spayne comes no signe of any such intention.”

By mid-July, with Messia delayed in transit—he had, supposedly, injured himself while stepping from a coach outside of Bordeaux—and the English growing impatient, Rubens was ordered to travel north to Spanish-controlled Breda. From his room at the Swan, he dashed off a letter to Gerbier in The Hague offering to meet just over the border in Zevenbergen; he was permitted to travel no farther into enemy territory. That didn’t sit well with Gerbier; Zevenbergen was too close to Flanders for his tastes. “My going thither would cause reports and suspicions,” he replied. Secrecy, as Charles had commanded, was essential, as there were any number of parties—in particular the French—who would be anxious to sabotage whatever progress they might achieve. “Choose whether you will come to Delft, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, or Utrecht, if The Hague does not suit you.” Later in the day, having had a chance to “ruminate” on the matter, Gerbier dispatched a second, badgering missive to Rubens, warning that the whole negotiation was in jeopardy. “I must tell you, as my friend, that I apprehend this business will end in smoke … If the Infanta and the Marquis are so zealous about this good business, why then render it subject to suspicions? … Do not let this business which took its rise upon the subject of pictures, end in smoke; our ancient friendship gives me liberty to speak freely.” The tone was grating, and Gerbier capped the message with a pestering comment about a few works Rubens still owed Buckingham. This was typical for Gerbier, who existed in a state of almost perpetual (and occasionally justified) aggrievement that was constitutionally anathema to the more self-secure Rubens.

Manipulating correspondence was one thing; disobeying a direct order was another. Traveling beyond Zevenbergen without permission was out of the question. Instead, Rubens returned to Brussels and formulated a plan that would satisfy all parties: As soon as arrangements could be made, he would embark on a multi-week tour of Holland on which he would visit with the most prestigious painters in that land, apprising himself of developments in the field and acquiring works for his own collection, now depleted. Gerbier, fellow artist and connoisseur, would meet him along the route, ostensibly to conclude the transaction with Buckingham. (That deal had always been the cover for their negotiations, and a few details remained outstanding, as Gerbier’s previous missive suggested.) This strategy was not without its perils. When Carleton heard of it, he wrote to the artist directly, warning that if he spent too long in Holland, he would be in serious jeopardy, subject either to the embarrassment of deportation or, worse, to arrest for treason.

It was risky, but Rubens was willing. His celebrity, he thought, would insulate him from the worst dangers. “I regard the whole world as my country, and I believe that I should be very welcome everywhere,” he once wrote. The infanta consented as well. Writing to her nephew Philip in Madrid, she defended her decision to allow Rubens to participate in the secret negotiation he had done so much to initiate. His status as an artist was not an issue. “Gerbier is a painter just as Rubens is,” she told Philip. “It matters little who takes the first steps; if they are followed up, direction will naturally be entrusted to persons of the highest rank.”

RUBENS VENTURED
into enemy territory on July 20, stopping first in Rotterdam before meeting Gerbier at Delft the next day, the first of eight they would spend together. That quiet city of canals was just a
short ride from The Hague. Rubens made it a special point to avoid the Dutch capital, where his presence would have engendered wild speculation among the political classes. Carleton, to avoid suspicion, chose to leave the proceedings entirely in the hands of Gerbier, even as he was the senior diplomat. “In this ombragious tyme and place there can not bee too much circumspection used to prevent inconveniences,” he wrote back to London. To avoid any misunderstandings, he secretly dispatched his nephew to inform Frederick Henry, the Prince of Orange, of the negotiations. The prince was thought to be amenable to some kind of accommodation with the Spanish, even as he was massing an army against them at Arnhem.

Delft was just the first stop on the itinerary of the two artist-diplomats, and given its proximity to the chattering hordes at The Hague and the relative paucity of artists worth visiting, it was not a good place for them to remain. Scaglia joined them there, but only briefly. To keep up appearances, the group probably visited the workshop of Michiel van Mierevelt, a distinguished portraitist and friend of Pieter van Veen, Rubens’s Dutch lawyer. When they had a chance to remove themselves from their hosts, they broached the subject that had brought them together, delicately at first. Rubens was effusive about the good intentions of his superiors and their receptivity to England’s overtures. But whenever Gerbier tried to draw from him some concession, the great Flemish painter parried. Rubens was a man accustomed to delivering the most tangible of miracles, but now he was placing the creative onus squarely on his English counterpart.

Carleton kept tabs on the two men, reporting back to London that the artists were “walking from towne to towne,” discussing politics and pictures. At Utrecht, the two men lodged at the Kasteel van Antwerpen. The name of that elegant boardinghouse along the Oudegracht must have been a comfort to Rubens. It was also the
finest place for a visitor to lay his head in Utrecht, and it was just a short stroll west from its door to the center of town, where the painter Gerrit van Honthorst had recently purchased a decommissioned cloister on the Dom Square. It was an impressive home, one appropriate for the dean of the painters’ guild in a city that was then the capital of Dutch art.

Utrecht’s reputation as a haven for art made it a logical destination for a painter traveling from Flanders. That it was also known as a Catholic holdout in the increasingly pluralistic, or at least tolerant, United Provinces also made it appealing for a visitor who practiced that religion. Indeed, Utrecht could boast a long tradition as a center of Catholic learning. Adrian VI, a Utrecht native, had been elected pope in 1522. A century later, better than half of the city’s population of thirty thousand practiced the Roman faith, though not too publicly. Services were held in
schuilkerken
, underground prayer rooms, some resplendently ornamented. Rubens, who liked a morning mass, probably visited one during his stay.

Among its intellectuals, Utrecht’s Catholic history bred an interest in the classical tradition of Rome, heart of the Counter-Reformation. Honthorst himself spent at least four years honing his craft there. His dusky, candlelit genre scenes earned him an impressive following among Rome’s leading patrons (including the cardinal Scipione Borghese, also a Rubens client) and the nickname Gherardo della Notte—Gerrit of the Night. When he returned, he became the most visible of several Utrecht painters, the
Caravaggisti
, who made a business of fusing the Italian painter’s frank theatricality with a more domesticated Dutch sensibility.

Honthorst’s painting was indebted to Caravaggio, but his professional practice was quite consciously modeled on that of Rubens. Indeed, when Rubens walked into the Honthorst studio for the first time, it must have seemed quite familiar: a large open
space, one hundred meters square, packed with student apprentices who paid a 100-guilder annual tuition to learn from the master. One student in particular caught Rubens’s eye: Joachim von Sandrart, an ambitious twenty-one-year-old from Frankfurt who was at work on a painting of the Greek philosopher Diogenes. According to Sandrart, Rubens was “well pleased” with the picture, and made a few encouraging suggestions.

As Honthorst was occupied with other affairs—in fairness, Rubens and Gerbier had arrived on short notice—Sandrart was deputized to escort the two men around Utrecht. Together, the group visited the studios of Abraham Bloemaert, éminence grise of Utrecht’s artists, and his son Hendrick, also a painter; Cornelis van Poelenburg, an old Rubens acquaintance from Rome, who commemorated the meeting with a portrait of himself and his old friend; and the
Caravaggisti
Jan van Bijlert and Hendrick ter Brugghen. Rubens especially admired Ter Brugghen. He also took a shine to the sycophantic Sandrart. When Rubens and Gerbier left Utrecht, the young German went along with them. Whether he had any idea of what exactly the two men were discussing when he was out of earshot is unclear. In his account of the experience, written years later, it seems he had accepted at face value Rubens’s explanation that the whole excursion had been intended “to forget his sorrows” following the death of his wife.

The enlarged group’s first destination, after Utrecht, was Amsterdam, the city that had become all that Antwerp was in its golden age. Sheltered by the Zuider Zee and defended by the fierce Dutch navy, Amsterdam was now the financial capital of northern Europe, and its commercial tentacles extended clear around the globe. Its population, when Rubens and company arrived, was already beyond 100,000 and growing at an astounding rate. Rubens must have seen in it the Antwerp his parents knew, a proud boomtown
inventing itself daily. After a visit to the young metropolis just a few years earlier, Dudley Carleton had mused that forsaken Antwerp was a “towne withowt people” whereas in teeming Amsterdam there was a “people without a towne.” Pleasure, then, was not what attracted Rubens and Gerbier to the city. It was commerce that made Amsterdam great, and it was commerce that brought the two artist-diplomats there. During their brief stay, Rubens and Gerbier met with the art dealer Michel Le Blon, who was commissioned to ship the remaining works owed Buckingham back to England. Given the Dutch blockade of the Flemish coast, it was necessary to send the pictures through Holland.