Master of Shadows (26 page)

RUBENS WAS HAPPY
to be back in the saddle, and the ride south from Antwerp to Spain was a scenic one. In a rush, he barely stopped to admire the French countryside, and didn’t even pay a call on his Parisian friends. His only significant break was a detour
to the Atlantic coast for a review of the impressive French siege works at La Rochelle. (Buckingham’s English force had been dispatched at nearby Île de Ré, but a stalwart Huguenot contingent stood firm within the city walls.) He was given a private tour by the superintendent of the works, which he deemed “a spectacle worthy of admiration.” Then it was on to Madrid, posthaste. The infanta had specifically ordered him not to dawdle, and the king himself was expecting his arrival.

It was good, then, that Rubens kept himself fit, and practiced his riding technique daily along the Antwerp ramparts. For a lesser man, the long trip might have been an enervating trial. For Rubens, a skilled equestrian, it was a matter of personal satisfaction that he could make it in good time. On September 15, a mere two weeks after departing Antwerp, he proudly trotted his horse across the broad expanse of the Plaza de Palacio and through the main gate of Madrid’s Real Alcázar. It had been decades since his last visit to the royal palace, and though he recognized its broad expanse, there was no denying that it had changed considerably—and for the better—in the intervening years. The Alcázar that he had seen on his first trip to Madrid, a brief stopover during his embassy for the Duke of Mantua, was a dank and grim affair, with small windows and thick walls designed to protect its inhabitants from enemy fire and the harsh summer rays of the Castilian sun. The name itself, derived from the Arabic term for “castle,”
al-qasr
, testified to its origins as a ninth-century Moorish fortress. More recently, when Philip III returned his court to Madrid after its abbreviated residence in Valladolid, he initiated a major campaign to beautify the building and its grounds, under the direction of the royal architect, Juan Gómez de Mora. The entirely new front facade, with classically framed windows and a central portico, was only completed in 1621.

Rubens came alone, but not unencumbered. Packed carefully
against the elements—he had learned his lesson on that first Spanish trip—were eight canvases to be placed in the Salón Nuevo, a large reception hall on the main floor of the palace with balconies looking out onto the plaza below. Gómez de Mora had remodeled it into a magnificent gallery with richly carpeted floors and gilded cornices, the better to accentuate the most cherished fruits of His Majesty’s art collection. Among the paintings installed when Rubens arrived were eight Titians, including the famous equestrian portrait
Charles V at Mühlberg
. As a pendant to it, there was a portrait of the reigning monarch, Philip IV, also on horseback. That was the work of the gifted young painter recently honored with the title “usher to the king’s chamber”: Diego Velázquez.

Rubens had pushed himself hard to complete the paintings he carried with him in the frantic month before he left Antwerp. These pictures, with their biblical and classical subjects, were conceived as four paired sets, each somehow reflective of the virtues of Habsburg rule in general and Philip’s reign in particular. In designing the allegorical program, however, Rubens couldn’t help but reference the mission that had commanded his attention for the past two years, and now brought him to Madrid: the negotiation with England. The inescapable subtext of his
Samson Breaking the Jaws of the Lion
was the figurative defanging of Buckingham and the British crown (historically identified with the lion). The
Reconciliation of Jacob and Esau
, depicting biblical brothers, made subtle allusion to Philip and Charles, the two art-loving young kings who had, in fact, nearly become brothers (in-law) in 1623. All together, the group of paintings made an inspired pictorial argument for the cause Rubens came to support, though one abstract enough to avoid any suggestion of impropriety.

These were not the only Rubenses to reach Madrid along with the painter. In the weeks before he departed Antwerp, another shipment
left Flanders for the Spanish capital, this one carrying a series of twenty enormous tapestries celebrating the Eucharist. It was his biggest tapestry series to date, though not his first. The hangings were a gift from the infanta to the Convent of the Descalzas Reales, where she had prayed in her youth, and she had paid dearly for them: 30,000 guilders for Rubens’s designs and another 100,000 for the tapestries themselves. In its scale, or at least its price, the project rivaled the series of paintings Rubens had created for Marie de’ Medici, though the infanta’s intentions were considerably less narcissistic than those of the vainglorious French queen. As a mark of tribute, Rubens inserted the humble infanta’s image into one of the tapestries.

The painter’s arrival did not go unnoticed in the halls of the great palace. The Alcázar was the residence of the royal family, but also the seat of Spanish government, and its paired courtyards, one each for the king and the queen, were typically alive with the hustle and bustle of grandees, functionaries, merchants, and assorted looky-loos. The papal nuncio, Giovanni Battista Pamphili, reported Rubens’s presence back to Rome, noting that “he often confers in secret with the count-duke, and in a manner very different from which his profession permits.” The story emanating from the king’s chambers was that Rubens was in town to favor His Royal Highness with a portrait, but Pamphili wasn’t buying that explanation. “It is believed that this great friend of Buckingham has come to propose a treaty of peace between the two kingdoms,” he wrote, “or else that he has been charged, as one enjoying the confidence of all his countrymen, to say what they think of a truce to be concluded in Flanders.” The Venetian envoy, Alvise Mocenigo, similarly informed his doge that Rubens “has had several secret interviews with the count of Olivares.”

They were right, of course. From practically the moment he had
dismounted his horse, Rubens had been consulting with Olivares on matters of state. Unlike Spinola, the artist seemed to get along well with the count-duke, who held him in high esteem. Whereas the marquis was an old soldier, quiet and efficient, Rubens was an urbane man of letters and no threat to the
valido
’s authority. They had, in fact, already established a respectful and charitable relationship. A few years earlier, at the count-duke’s request, the artist had drawn a portrait of Olivares for use in a commemorative print. (Never having seen him in person, Rubens worked from original images provided by Velázquez.) Olivares responded with a gracious note, thanking Rubens for “the love that you have shown me.” Upon the death of Rubens’s wife, Isabella, the count-duke sent a letter of condolence.

This budding friendship did not prevent Rubens from offering a typically gimlet-eyed appraisal of Olivares and his retinue. In his correspondence from Madrid, he bemoaned the rather “severe” and “supercilious” nature of Spanish intellectual life, a tone set by the count-duke. Despite these personal reservations, Rubens was well prepared to navigate in that kind of atmosphere, and achieved in short order that which had failed Spinola for months: the conversion of Olivares to his cause. Rubens’s gift for persuasion and his amicable relationship with Olivares surely contributed to this success. Though the count-duke remained unwilling to compromise with the Dutch, a peace with England was something he was beginning to see as useful. As Rubens argued, such a treaty would mean one less enemy for Spain and, through the good offices of the English king, increase pressure on the Hollanders to cave in to his demands.

At the end of September, the count-duke took Rubens and his advice to the Council of State. Olivares opened the session with a lengthy preamble, carefully framing the proposed peace negotiation
from a position of Spanish strength. England, having learned the futility of any attack on Spain after its pitiful and unprovoked expedition at Cádiz, was now on its knees before the Habsburg crown. Olivares proceeded to review his own correspondence with English ministers for the council, and then called upon Rubens to make a presentation to the assembly. Flanked by his new ally, Rubens exhibited the papers he had brought from Antwerp and asserted that in his estimation England was sincere in its desire to make a formal peace with Spain, and on acceptable terms.

Together, Olivares and Rubens made for a convincing team, and they could bolster their case by noting that an English envoy, newly arrived in Madrid, had informed them that Buckingham himself was willing to come to Spain to negotiate the proposed agreement. Moreover, Buckingham would be joined by Sir Francis Cottington, a two-time English ambassador to Spain and the most powerful Hispanophile in the English government. Informed of these positive developments, the typically wavering council accepted Olivares’s request to formally open negotiations, and the diffident king followed with his approval. For a moment, it looked as if the whole plan just might come together.

Buckingham, however, was in no position to make a trip to Madrid—or anywhere else—in September 1628. He was dead, and had been for more than a month. At the end of August, a wounded and disgruntled veteran of the disastrous campaign at Île de Ré had taken a knife to the duke at Portsmouth, on England’s southern coast. News of Buckingham’s assassination did not reach Madrid until October, after the meeting of the Council of State. Rubens had in recent months predicted just such an ignominious end for his patron, suggesting the French failure would make him “the sport of fortune.” But the moment of his death was, to say the least, inopportune. Buckingham, though widely detested, was the primary
English champion of a Spanish alliance, and while it seemed there was still enthusiasm for the idea at Whitehall, there would be a temporary hiatus in discussions while the political situation in London sorted itself out.

RUBENS TOOK FULL ADVANTAGE
of his extended time in the Spanish capital. He was assigned a suite of rooms in the Alcázar, where he shared a studio space with Velázquez adjacent to the Gallery of the North Wind, which was itself conveniently placed between a game room and the count-duke’s private apartments. From their window, the two artists could look out to a mountain landscape. Off to their right they could see the
picadero
, used as a bullring and for equestrian sports. It is appealing to imagine the two men painting together in the crisp morning light and, in the afternoon, talking about their craft on leisurely strolls through the gridded parterre of the Jardín de la Reina, adjacent to the eastern wing of the palace. They had probably been in contact even before Rubens’s trip to Spain, in regard to Rubens’s portrait drawing of the count-duke.

According to Francisco Pacheco, Velázquez’s father-in-law, the two painters became friends during Rubens’s stay in Madrid, and even traveled together to visit the Escorial, an hour’s ride north of the city. At the very end of his life, in one of his last letters, Rubens wrote fondly of that trip, though he didn’t mention his traveling companion. The climb up through the Guadarramas was hard work for the artists, but they had made their journey on a warm day with gentle breezes. From the summit of La Nava, beneath an immense wooden cross, the two men could look over a great valley toward the broad facade of the monastery, the village adjacent to it, and the royal hunting lodge—the Fresneda—with its two crystalline ponds. To their right, clouds wisped over the Sierra Tocada. A hermit
walking with a donkey and a deer peeking in from the surrounding forest made for a scene so idyllic Rubens felt compelled to paint it “on the spot.”

Pacheco, the author of a history of painting, claimed Rubens admired the works of his son-in-law for their humility—not an attribute normally associated with Rubens’s art, but one he appreciated in others, especially the Flemish genre painters who were his friends and occasional collaborators. Rubens recognized a great talent (like Caravaggio) when so confronted, and was self-possessed enough to assimilate new ideas without becoming a slave to them (like Caravaggio’s Utrecht disciples). Velázquez, however, appears to have had no measurable effect on Rubens, who was then past his fiftieth birthday and twenty-two years the Spaniard’s senior. Rubens, similarly, had little discernible impact on Velázquez, even if he could reasonably claim to be the single most influential artist alive, and certainly the best paid. In truth, their work was inherently irreconcilable. Whereas Rubens’s canvases were, for the most part, emotionally charged and full of dynamic, colorful energy, Velázquez’s pictures were marked by a controlling, almost clinical detachment. This, however, did not necessarily preclude them from becoming friends.