Painter Diplomat

Few men in history have struck a happier balance with their age or won richer rewards in return than Flemish Artist Peter Paul Rubens, master of Europe's baroque style at its 17th century peak. A staunch Roman Catholic, unquestioning Royalist, shrewd businessman, Rubens was both a spectacularly successful diplomat, the trusted adviser of kings, and the most sought-after painter of his day, whose masterpieces today are treasured by every major museum of Europe. In an exhibition of his oil sketches and drawings, collected by Harvard's Fogg Museum and Manhattan's Pierpont Morgan Library and on display in Manhattan last week, the master's touch is evident in even his most casual work.

Rubens' own confidently drawn self-characterization found few dissenters in his day or since. Of himself as an artist

Rubens once remarked: "My talent is such that no undertaking, however vast or various, has ever surpassed my courage." Of himself as a diplomat: "I assure you that in public affairs I am the most dispassionate man in the world, except where my property and person are concerned ... I regard the whole world as my country, and I believe that I should be very welcome everywhere." Even so sharp-eyed an English observer as Charles I's Ambassador, the Earl of Carlisle, wrote home from the Continent: "He made mee believe that nothing but good intentions and sincerity have been in his heart, which on my soul I think is trew, because in other things I finde him a reall man." Page to Painter. Rubens' success story had an early beginning. As a page in the house of the Countess of Lalaing, he learned the elaborate etiquette of baroque court life while still in his teens, then studied painting under the best Antwerp craftsmen of his day. At 23, a fluent Latin scholar and already an accomplished painter, he set off on the grand tour, in Italy joined the household of the powerful Duke of Mantua. While in his service.

Rubens seized the unparalleled opportunity to study at first hand the great masters of the past.

As a result, Rubens returned to Antwerp aged 31 in 1608, both a skilled courtier, versed in eight languages, and a master artist with the whole repertory of Renaissance techniques at his fingertips. In drawings such as his sketch for Daniel in the Lions' Den (left), he proved that he could infuse into classical and Biblical themes a new verve and power distinctively his own. Respectably married to the pretty daughter of a conservative Antwerp lawyer, and appointed court painter to the sovereigns of the Spanish Netherlands. Rubens so prospered that he finally complained to a friend: "To tell the truth. I am so burdened with commissions, both public and private, that for some years to come I cannot commit myself."

Whirlwind into Heaven. Setting up a workshop of apprentice painters and engravers, Rubens fell into the habit of letting assistants fill in landscape areas and block in the main figures before he put on his own finishing touches. The result was sometimes to dull the master's touch in the final effect. But his genius emerges undiluted in the vivid and dramatic sketches which Rubens himself did in rich oil glazes. Among his most treasured works are the oil sketches for the 39 superb ceiling murals he designed for the Jesuit Church of St. Charles Borromeo in Antwerp (opposite); final work, largely carried out by assistants, was wiped out by fire in 1718.

For St. Charles Church, Rubens picked the figure of Prophet Elijah, took his text from II Kings 2: "Behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire . . . and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven." Painting the picture in perspective to be viewed from below, Rubens chose the instant of Elijah's disappearance, his mantle slipping down for Elisha to inherit, and depicted it with all his baroque love of whirling space and unleashed power.

The figure of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, a 4th century theologian and one of the four great fathers of the Eastern Church, was a subject particularly suited to Rubens' talents. St. Gregory was a poet and scholar forced by history to labor against the waves of heresies that almost engulfed Constantinople. To Rubens, whose diplomatic efforts long aimed at bringing to terms the Protestant and Roman Catholic Netherlands, St. Gregory's prayer could have been the painter's own: "May we together receive the reward of the warfare we have waged, which we have endured."

Diamond Hatband. Although Rubens' diplomatic career kept him away from his easel for as much as six months at a time, he more than made up for it by capping his diplomatic successes with handsome royal painting commissions. In Paris he completed his greatest picture cycle, decorating the gallery of Marie de' Medici's Luxembourg Palace with unabashedly Hattering allegories of the Queen Mother's reign. In Madrid, where Rubens was appointed secretary of the Privy Council of The Netherlands, he painted no fewer than five portraits of Spain's Philip IV. In London, where he helped set the stage for the 1630 peace between England and Spain and brought off his greatest diplomatic triumph, Rubens was not only handsomely rewarded by Charles I with a knighthood, jeweled sword, ring and diamond-studded hatband, but received a commission to decorate the ceiling in the Banqueting House at Whitehall.

Finally, at 56, Rubens retired from what he called the labyrinth of diplomacy. Admitting that he was "not yet inclined to live the abstinent life of the celibate" after the death of his wife, he turned down a court marriage for pretty. 16-year-old Helena Fourment. "one who would not blush to see me take my brushes in hand." His remaining years Rubens joyfully spent between his own baroque palace in Antwerp and beloved Castle Steen, where he gave himself over to painting and to his new wife and children until in 1640, at 62, he was carried off during an acute attack of gout.

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