negotiate. Indeed, he had so many buyers that he dealt with only the most distinguished connoisseurs. “He sends less competent judges to less competent painters,” wrote one client. Those who wanted his pictures had to accept his demands.
The stereotype of the artist as a destitute genius supported only by charity is largely a product of the nineteenth century. The artists of Rubens’s era were craftsmen, and those who were masters ran efficient and profitable workshops. But even judged by the standards of his contemporaries, Rubens’s success as a capitalist was extraordinary. In its prime, the Rubens studio earned something on the order of 100 guilders per day, a figure that left the painter with an annual salary more than fifty times that of the average mason, and far in excess of the income requirement not just for a baron but also for a prince. Men of those ranks, however, were precluded from engaging in something so base as a trade—let alone one that required manual labor—for their incomes.
Rubens, for his part, saw nothing ignoble in what he called his “
dolcissima professione,”
and was unashamed to show off the wealth he acquired through its practice. He could regularly be seen drivingabout Antwerp in a luxurious carriage, dressed impeccably and attended to by a flock of servants and assistants. He had few enemies, but even those who found his flights of theatricality self-indulgent or pretentious never dared to accuse him of laziness. He rose before dawn and began work with the first light. He ate a small vegetarian lunch around noon—he avoided meat, lest it upset his digestion and keep him from the easel. Following the meal, he worked through the afternoon until five, after which time he would exercise one of the several fine Spanish horses from his stable along the ramparts encircling the city—the routine of a gentleman, not a tradesman. Supper was taken with family and friends, but again Rubens was fairly abstemious. He didn’t drink to excess, and he never gambled.
Evening hours were spent with his growing family and a close-knit circle of friends. Regulars at the Rubens house included his old schoolboy chum Balthasar Moretus, the scholars Jan van den Wouvere and Jan Caspar Gevaerts (known respectively in their Romanist circles as Woverius and Gevartius), and the still-life painter Jan “Velvet” Brueghel, son of the great Pieter Brueghel. (The nickname paid homage to his soft touch with a brush.) Rubens and Brueghel were so close that Rubens, more gifted with words, often handled his friend’s correspondence. Brueghel affectionately referred to him as “my secretary.” The two masters were also occasional collaborators, a highly unusual practice for artists of their stature. In these innovative works, Rubens painted the human figures, and Brueghel the surrounding floral arrangements (flowers being his specialty). Frans Snyders, another friend and an expert animal painter, was also a frequent collaborator. The benefit of these joint works, beyond their aesthetic pleasures, was that they could be sold at especially high rates, as they combined the skills of multiple masters, thereby providing “added value.”
In Rubens’s era, genre specialists like Brueghel and Snyders were esteemed somewhat less than painters of grand subjects from history, but Rubens was never snobbish about such distinctions—though he was sure to place himself in the latter, more exalted group. Indeed, his friends routinely praised his generosity and humility, traits cultivated by his mother and his Jesuit education. Early in his career, the artist neatly summed up his personal philosophy with a simple diagram that he sketched into an Antwerp guest book. Above a small circle with a dot at its center, he wrote the Latin phrase “
Medio Deus omnia campo.”
“God is all things in the middle of the field.” Art history’s most celebrated exemplar of carnality was, at least intellectually, a man of quiet
The stereotype of the artist as a destitute genius supported only by charity is largely a product of the nineteenth century. The artists of Rubens’s era were craftsmen, and those who were masters ran efficient and profitable workshops. But even judged by the standards of his contemporaries, Rubens’s success as a capitalist was extraordinary. In its prime, the Rubens studio earned something on the order of 100 guilders per day, a figure that left the painter with an annual salary more than fifty times that of the average mason, and far in excess of the income requirement not just for a baron but also for a prince. Men of those ranks, however, were precluded from engaging in something so base as a trade—let alone one that required manual labor—for their incomes.
Rubens, for his part, saw nothing ignoble in what he called his “
dolcissima professione,”
and was unashamed to show off the wealth he acquired through its practice. He could regularly be seen drivingabout Antwerp in a luxurious carriage, dressed impeccably and attended to by a flock of servants and assistants. He had few enemies, but even those who found his flights of theatricality self-indulgent or pretentious never dared to accuse him of laziness. He rose before dawn and began work with the first light. He ate a small vegetarian lunch around noon—he avoided meat, lest it upset his digestion and keep him from the easel. Following the meal, he worked through the afternoon until five, after which time he would exercise one of the several fine Spanish horses from his stable along the ramparts encircling the city—the routine of a gentleman, not a tradesman. Supper was taken with family and friends, but again Rubens was fairly abstemious. He didn’t drink to excess, and he never gambled.
Evening hours were spent with his growing family and a close-knit circle of friends. Regulars at the Rubens house included his old schoolboy chum Balthasar Moretus, the scholars Jan van den Wouvere and Jan Caspar Gevaerts (known respectively in their Romanist circles as Woverius and Gevartius), and the still-life painter Jan “Velvet” Brueghel, son of the great Pieter Brueghel. (The nickname paid homage to his soft touch with a brush.) Rubens and Brueghel were so close that Rubens, more gifted with words, often handled his friend’s correspondence. Brueghel affectionately referred to him as “my secretary.” The two masters were also occasional collaborators, a highly unusual practice for artists of their stature. In these innovative works, Rubens painted the human figures, and Brueghel the surrounding floral arrangements (flowers being his specialty). Frans Snyders, another friend and an expert animal painter, was also a frequent collaborator. The benefit of these joint works, beyond their aesthetic pleasures, was that they could be sold at especially high rates, as they combined the skills of multiple masters, thereby providing “added value.”
In Rubens’s era, genre specialists like Brueghel and Snyders were esteemed somewhat less than painters of grand subjects from history, but Rubens was never snobbish about such distinctions—though he was sure to place himself in the latter, more exalted group. Indeed, his friends routinely praised his generosity and humility, traits cultivated by his mother and his Jesuit education. Early in his career, the artist neatly summed up his personal philosophy with a simple diagram that he sketched into an Antwerp guest book. Above a small circle with a dot at its center, he wrote the Latin phrase “
Medio Deus omnia campo.”
“God is all things in the middle of the field.” Art history’s most celebrated exemplar of carnality was, at least intellectually, a man of quiet
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