by Mark Lamster
For the moment, however, it did not go unnoticed that Spinola departed his glorious welcome in the private carriage of the king’s valido, the dour-faced Count-Duke of Olivares. It was the first time the two had met, and from the start it was an uncomfortable relationship. Their personalities, certainly, could not have been more different. Olivares was severe and punctilious, an intellectual, and, as Rubens would later note, a plotter of “great enterprises.” He reputedly kept a coffin in his chambers as a standing reminder of his mortality. Frightened visitors often wondered if theirs was at stake. An equestrian portrait by Velázquez shows the count-duke sneering over his shoulder on a rearing steed, the upturned ends of his mustache giving him an aggressively menacing, even villainous appearance. This was a far cry from the regal mounted portrait Rubens had made of Olivares’s predecessor, the Duke of Lerma—to say nothing of the painter’s stately depiction of Spinola in his gleaming armor. Those contrasting images of Olivares and Spinola, the former belligerent and the latter self-possessed, explained a good deal about the two men, and their antipathy. The count-duke was an emotional man, prone to fits of melancholy, and insistent on the maintenance of his image as a broker of Spanish power. Spinola, however, had little to prove; his military accomplishments conferred a natural authority. He was a soldier’s soldier, a man gripped by logistics and details, not especially eloquent but persuasively frank when the situation required, as it did now.
Bumping along the road into Madrid, Spinola had the unenviable task of informing the second-most-powerful man in Spain (the most powerful man, according to many) of precisely that which he did not wish to hear. As the commander of the Spanish army in Flanders, Spinola had been the blunt instrument of the count-duke’s foreign policy—a policy he could no longer support. The war in the Low Countries was not going well. Spanish offensives had stalled. Their great canal project was but a ditch in the ground. The Dutch had taken Groenlo. There were no funds to pay the army. The prospect of widespread mutiny—for which there was ugly historical precedent—was dangerously close to becoming reality. The entire country was on the brink of catastrophic financial collapse. As Spinola saw it, there were but two options: substantially increase war funding from Spain or forge a peace with the Dutch. As the former seemed out of the question, there was no alternative—it was time to make peace. With the Habsburg forces of the Holy Roman Empire threatening in nearby Germany, the Dutch would be motivated to bargain.
From the comfort and safety of his apartments at Madrid’s royal palace, the count-duke had developed an entirely different vision of Spanish affairs. As far as he was concerned, this was no time for compromise. With the English humbled, France bogged down fighting the Huguenot rebellion at La Rochelle, and imperial troops ready for action in Germany, the time was right for Spain to press its advantages across Europe and to secure its colonial empire abroad. That the Dutch were making concessions at Roosendaal only hardened his resolve. “Never in history,” he said, “has there been such a favorable season for the Catholic cause.”
Spinola and Olivares’s heated, joyless ride into the city culminated in a private audience before His Royal Majesty Philip IV. Tall, gawky, and still a month shy of his twenty-third birthday, the conflict-averse “Planet King” stood pensively in his bedchamber, where he received his most important visitors. (The moniker alluded not to the breadth of his empire but to his celestial presence as the head of state.) Normally, he simply deferred to the advice of the count-duke; the valido had been his mentor ever since Philip had ascended the throne at the tender age of sixteen. In that time, Olivares had orchestrated state policy while the young king received the rigorous physical and intellectual education appropriate for a Habsburg ruler. Now, however, his reflexive dependence on Olivares was tempered by the commanding presence of Spinola, the most distinguished military officer in his service. The hero of Breda was not a man who could be easily dismissed, especially when he was speaking with such insight and conviction. Inevitably, given Philip’s temperament, there was no resolution, and the debate moved on to the Council of State.
For better than a month, Olivares and Spinola vied for support within the council, making impassioned arguments behind closed doors over troop strength requirements, the costs needed to effectively prosecute a war, and the extent of Spain’s diplomatic and military leverage across Europe. It was, by any standard, a nasty fight between two political heavyweights. To Olivares, Spinola was an overly cautious obstructionist without the political vision to capitalize on Spain’s great hegemonic moment. Spinola, conversely, presented Olivares as an ideologue divorced from the ugly realities on the ground in the Low Countries—ugly realities generated by the count-duke’s failed policies.
Removed from the action and largely in the dark, Isabella’s Brussels court was consumed by anxiety as Spinola fought the battle of his political life. Indeed, the embroiled marquis had little time for correspondence describing the shifting allegiances within the council. In mid-April, Rubens wrote to his Parisian friends that Spinola was “gaining authority” with Philip and his ministers, but the truth was that this assertion was based more on hope than on fact. Two weeks later, with frustration setting in, the artist complained of Spanish intransigence, not to mention the “lazy and indolent character” of its citizens, a slur that was well beneath his dignity. By summer, he was almost entirely disillusioned. “The Spaniards think they can treat this sagacious man as they are in the habit of treating all those who go to that court for any business,” he wrote. “All are dismissed with empty promises, and kept in suspense by vain hopes which are finally frustrated without having settled anything.”
As Rubens both feared and suspected, Spinola was putting up a valiant effort but fighting a losing battle. The end product was a Solomonic decision to authorize Isabella to negotiate with the Dutch, as Spinola wished, but to make demands so uncompromising and draconian that they would almost certainly be rejected. These were outlined in a twenty-three-article memorandum authored by Olivares, the key stipulations being: Dutch withdrawal from the Americas; the opening of the Scheldt; open Catholic religious practice in the provinces; and a full recognition of Spanish sovereignty in perpetuity. In exchange, the Dutch would be granted what they already had in practice—de facto political freedom. Moreover, Spinola was ordered to return at once to Brussels to begin a new military offensive aimed at increasing Spanish leverage. The Dutch would be forced to capitulate either in the field or at the bargaining table—whichever came first.
Isabella was informed of this new policy direction in a letter from her nephew Philip written on May 1, 1628. In addition, the infanta was ordered to supply the king with all of Rubens’s correspondence with Gerbier and Buckingham regarding a peace agreement with England, not just the letters Rubens had seen fit to forward along to Spinola. If the crown was to do business with England, the crown was to be fully informed of the conduct of its agents. How was Philip to be sure that Rubens—a mere artist—had not misconstrued some important point or failed to capture some delicate nuance in Gerbier’s correspondence?
It was another in a string of condescending requests emanating from Madrid, but Rubens was by now inured to such affronts to the extent that he was aware of them, and being inherently positive in outlook, saw quickly how it might be turned to his own advantage. He was already planning the long journey he had hoped to take in the wake of his wife’s death. The brief trips he had made since then, first to France and then to Holland, had been all business, and not without stress. He was ready for something a bit grander. Rome had beckoned. After so depleting his cabinet of antiquities in the sale to Buckingham, a trip to the city he loved so much would allow him to restock his trove of classical statuary and medals. The potential patronage of the Vatican must also have been a draw. On the way south, he could stop to look again at his Medici cycle in Paris and then visit his old friend Peiresc at his home in Provence. Indeed, he had informed several of his friends, including the antiquarian Jan Caspar Gevaerts, of
his intention to travel to Italy before the end of the year.
Now, however, he saw it would be expedient to change his itinerary. In place of Rome, why not go directly to Madrid, where he could personally translate Gerbier’s letters? There, he would have entrée to the collections of the Escorial, and if not the patronage of the pope, then of the king of Spain. Better still, his expenses would be paid, and he would have the opportunity to see to it that all of his diplomatic work would not be simply abandoned by Philip and his do-nothing Spanish court. An oft-quoted proverb came to mind: “He who wants something goes himself; he who does not sends another.” Rubens, perhaps in response to Philip’s foot-dragging, had even taken up the promise of opportunity as a subject for his art. While waiting for Madrid to take action, he repeatedly depicted the allegorical figure Occasio, a typically refulgent maiden whose golden locks (representing the chance for peace) were grabbed not by a willing prince but by a sullen warrior. Given the situation, he could be forgiven for his pessimism. At the same time, with Antwerp suffering, he sketched out several more realistic images of human suffering: a bereaved woman sitting, head in hand, crumpled on the ground as battle is waged behind her; a pair of naked warriors placed back-to-back, their wrists lashed with an angry sea in the distance. So, yes, Rubens told Isabella, he would be happy to forward his correspondence along to His Majesty, but with the coding and the language barrier and Gerbier’s weird syntax, wouldn’t it be better if he delivered the letters in person?
Even this proposal was too much for the unsure king to resolve without consultation. On July 4, the Council of State decided—or rather did not decide—that negotiations with England “may be pushed forward or held back according as it be judged opportune. If they are to be continued, the advent of Rubens will be more useful than injurious.” Two days later, Philip sent off his answer to Isabella. “On the subject of Peter Paul Rubens,” he wrote, “since he has given us to understand that he will come to Madrid if bidden to do so, and will bring with him the letters in his possession on the subject of the negotiations with England, it will be well for your Highness to request him to do so, but after agreeing with him that he shall be careful to bring all the documents of the kind which he has in his hands … Nevertheless, we must abstain from insisting on it with him, but leave him to decide it according to his own convenience.”
That was good enough. Rubens, unlike Philip, never lacked for decisiveness. This was, after all, the man who liked “brief negotiations, where each party gives and receives his share at once.” On August 13, the infanta informed both the king and the count-duke that Rubens would soon be on his way. Preparations began at once. A letter of recommendation for Deodate del Monte, the artist’s assistant of so many years, was notarized. During his absence, custody of the painter’s two boys would be jointly entrusted to their maternal grandfather and uncle. The education of his elder son, Albert, whom he called “my other self,” was left to Gevaerts, “the best of my friends and high priest of the Muses.” In the event some calamity might befall him, Rubens prepared a legal statement recording all of the worldly goods they would inherit. Looking at it all on one sheet, even Rubens himself must have been astonished by the scale of his accumulated wealth. Much of it was in real estate. There was his own home and workshop on the Wapper, of course, along with the adjacent houses, another a few blocks away on Jodenstraat, and seven more recently purchased with the profits from the Buckingham sale, which he leased out. Beyond the city walls, he had a thirty-two-acre farm, at Zwijndrecht, and a smaller tract at Ekeren, for which he annually received 400 guilders in rent. There were financial instruments as well, large annuities to be paid by the city of Antwerp and the state of Brabant. And finally there were the family jewels, not just his late wife’s gems—those were valued at 2,700 florins—but also Rubens’s paintings, those by his own hand and the many other works, large and small, old master and contemporary, he had purchased for his cabinet. Whatever the fate of their father, Albert and Nicolas Rubens would never want for material advantage.
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 twen
ty 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.”
