File:Sketches of great painters for young people (1902) (14597259800).jpg

Identifier: sketchesofgreatp00dall (find matches)
Title: Sketches of great painters for young people
Year: 1902 (1900s)
Authors: Dallin, Colonna Murray, Mrs
Subjects: Painters
Publisher: New York, Boston (etc.) Silver, Burdett and Company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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Text Appearing Before Image:
made the years bring forth a plentiful harvest. He
lived a regular, industrious life; and his working hours
were often enlivened by friends who read to him poetry
and history, the subjects in which he was most inter-
ested. He could enjoy many literatures, for he read
and spoke seven languages.
Antwerp is sometimes called the city of Rubens, and
justly so, for he adorned it with some of his best works.
Many places in the city remind us of him. His statue
is there, and so is his tomb, in the church of St.
Jacques. Behind his tomb is a picture, called some-
times the Holy Family of St. George, and sometimes
the Family of Rubens. In it are represented Rubens
himself, his father, his grandfather, his first wife, his
second wife, and his sister-in-law, who was made
famous by the picture called the Straw Hat. Rubens
appears in the picture as St. George, dressed in armor,
and crushing the dragon beneath his feet, while his
youngest son is represented as a charming little angel.
He represented, under a sacred title and with a loving
Text Appearing After Image:

The Straw Hat.
128

RUBENS. 129

hand, whatever seemed noblest and best in those whom
he most loved. It is a curious family document, and,
considered as such, it has great beauty and worth;
but as a religious picture, looked at from the point of
view of Italian art, it seems lacking in true sentiment.
The St. George belongs to the last period of Rubens's
work. Thirty-five years, at least, separate this picture
from his earliest work, the Trinity.
It is to the Cathedral of Notre Dame, however, that
we must go to see Rubens at his greatest, for two of his
masterpieces are there. These were the first important
works undertaken by him after his return from Italy,
and they proclaimed him the chief of the Flemish
school. The first of these is the Raising of the Cross,
which was painted in 1610. It is not so well known
or so generally admired as the Descent from the Cross,
his second great painting in the cathedral, but it is a
powerful work of marked originality. It is a triptych,
that is, a picture with one central portion and two

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