When the visitors
arrived he answered all their questions without leaving off any of
those three occupations! We must not all hope to match Rubens.
Rubens's great ceremonial paintings, containing numerous figures and
commemorating historical scenes in honour of his Royal patrons, were
executed by his own hands, or by the hands he taught and guided, with
great skill and speed. He painted also beautiful portraits of his wife
and family, and pictures of his own medieval castle, which he restored
and inhabited during the last years of his life, with views of the
country stretching out in all directions. He liked a comfortable life
and comfortable-looking people. He painted his own wives as often as
Rembrandt painted Saskia; both were plump enough to make our memories
recur with pleasure to the slenderer figures preferred by Botticelli
and the painters of his school.
To accomplish the great mass of historic, symbolic, and ceremonial
painting that still crowds the walls of the galleries of Europe, Rubens
needed many assistants and pupils, but only one of them, Van Dyck,
rose to the highest rank as a painter.
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