Art - Richard Cork on a peace-loving diplomat inspired by conflict
Rubens is the most intensely physical of artists. A man of formidable energy, who combined his prolific painting career with a distinguished role as an international diplomat, he infuses his finest images with an overwhelming sense of urgency.
As soon as we enter the Somerset House exhibition, he confronts us with the full bodily reality of Christ's martyrdom. Pushing anaemic piety to one side, Rubens has no hesitation in making us feel caught up in the pain, anxiety and turmoil of The Descent from the Cross. The finished painting was produced as a monumental altarpiece for Antwerp Cathedral in 1612. Like all his highly finished canvases, it was executed by the artist and his workshop assistants. But the exhibition, which concentrates largely on drawings and oil sketches, brings us very close to the inventiveness and personal mark-making of Rubens himself.
Rather than showing the deposition as an orderly or graceful affair, he sees it as a traumatic event for everyone embroiled in the drama. From the beginning, in an ink and wash drawing for the composition, the figures lurch and reel as they struggle to bring the body down from the cross. The Virgin, attended by a heavily shrouded woman, collapses on the earth and flings out both her arms in a gesture of despair. Other crosses can be seen on a distant hill, bending as if in response to a ferocious storm tearing through the ample expanse of sky.
By the time he painted a large oil study, probably for presentation to his patrons, Rubens had dispensed with the landscape. He must have regarded it as a distraction, for the panel is filled with the human participants alone. Narrow slices of sky can still be detected on both sides, but they are virtually black. Night has arrived, leaving only a hint of sunset above the Virgin's shoulder. She now rushes forward, stretching out one hand to touch Christ's elbow.
This Christ is a heavily muscled nude, as sturdy as the central figure in the great classical Laocoon carving, which Rubens studied while inventing his own embodiment of anguish. But compared with the Laocoon, his Christ is utterly defeated, with head dangling, eyes closed and mouth lolling open. Although blood continues to seep from the spear gash in his side, and smear the white sheet supporting him, the body's pallor suggests that he died some time ago.
The Descent from the Cross is so powerful, partly because it shows figures whose innate strength has been thwarted and thrown off-balance. When Rubens painted The Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin, possibly as an oil-sketch proposal for a new high altar in Antwerp Cathedral, he lacked that constraint. Crowding the tall picture with an excess of incidents, he filled the lowest area with figures reacting to the Virgin's disappearance from the tomb. Exaggerated gesturing abounds, showing how unashamedly theatrical Rubens could be at this early stage in his career.
As he grew older, Rubens learnt how to unleash his highly charged vitality on more appropriate subjects. Commissioned in 1620 to paint an ambitious sequence of 39 paintings for Antwerp's Jesuit church, he applied himself to the task with characteristic ebullience. The complete cycle no longer survives: most of it perished in a disastrous fire after the church was struck by lightning in 1718. But the surviving oil studies show how dynamic and exuberant the ceiling paintings must have been. St Gregory the Great, turning round to encounter the Virgin and Child in a vision, reacts so forcefully that his voluminous robes undulate, buckle and swell. Rubens here conveys the saint's tumultuous emotions solely through the animation of his draperies, and he performs a similar feat when tackling St Barbara Pursued by Her Father. Her dress appears to tremble as she runs perilously along castle battlements, while a white veil rises above her twisting head as though shuddering in fright.
Rubens had no need to rely on expressive garments when he tackled David Slaying Goliath. The giant lies prone on a rock, already defeated. In order to administer the coup de grace, the stern-faced victor places one bare foot on his opponent's armoured body and raises his sword to strike. The dramatic foreshortening, adopted in the knowledge that viewers would gaze up at the painting from below, adds to the vertiginous sense of alarm. We know that, within seconds, the sword will slice downwards with devastating force - just as, in another panel for the Jesuit scheme, Christ in the wilderness is about to unleash his indignant hand on the bowl proffered by a bearded, diabolic tempter.
Not that Rubens revelled in aggression. An uxorious man who loved escaping to the country with his family, he devoted his diplomatic activities to fostering accord between nations. But his art, paradoxically, took fire when conflict was the theme. The studies for his ceiling in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, still mercifully in situ, are dominated by jubilant scenes celebrating The Peaceful Reign of James I or The Unification of the Crowns of Scotland and England. Rubens strove to give these difficult subjects pictorial life, but the scheme only springs into full-blown dynamism when we discover a smaller side panel. Here, in The Bounty of James I Triumphing over Avarice, a dishevelled crone cries out as a younger, more comely and bare-breasted woman sits on top of her in triumph. Although Avarice's hand grips the hilt of a dagger, nothing will overcome the radiant Bounty. With light pulsing from her laurel-crowned brow, she seizes a cornucopia of possessions and lets them all - crown, sceptre, coins and jewels - tumble through the sky. By giving his allegory such immediacy, Rubens persuades us that generosity will triumph in the end.
"Rubens" is at Somerset House, Strand, London WC2 (020 7845 4631) until 8 February 2004
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
