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Charlotte Mason Picture Study Aid Peter Paul Rubens

politicians were on every corner, and many of the priests and officeseekers had no special talent to

recommend them. They were simply timeservers. Maria knew this: To get on you must have several

talents, otherwise people will tire of you.
In Cologne, Maria Rubens had met returned pilgrims from Rome and they had told her of

that trinity of giants, Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo; and how these men had been the peers

of prince and pope, because they had the ability to execute marvelous works of beauty.

This extraordinary talent called attention to themselves, so they were summoned out of the
crowd and became the companions and friends of the greatest names of their time.

And then, how better can one glorify his Maker than by covering the sacred walls of temples

with rich ornament!
The boy entered into the project, and the mother's ambition that he should retrieve his

father's fortune fired his heart. Thus does the failure in life of a parent often give incentive to the

genius of a son.

Tobias Verhaecht was the man who taught Rubens the elements of drawing, and inculcated
in him that love of Nature which was to be his lifelong heritage. The word "landscape" is Flemish,

and it was the Dutch who carried the term and the art into England. Verhaecht was among the very

first of landscape-painters. He was a specialist: he could draw trees and clouds, and a winding river,

but could not portray faces. And so he used to call in a worthy portrait-painter, by the name of
Franck, to assist him whenever he had a canvas on the easel that demanded the human form. Then

when Franck wanted background and perspective, Verhaecht would go over with a brush and a few

pots of paint and help him out.
At fifteen, the keen, intuitive mind of Rubens had fathomed the talents of those two

worthies, Verhaecht and Franck. His mind was essentially feminine: he absorbed ideas in the mass.

Soon he prided himself on being able to paint alone as good a picture as the two collaborators could
together. Yet he was too wise to affront them by the boast. The bent of his talent he thought was

toward historical painting; and more than this, he knew that only epic art would open the churches

for a painter. And so he next became a pupil under Adam van Noort. This man was a rugged old

character, who worked out things in his own way and pushed the standard of painting full ten

points to the front. His work shows a marked advance over that of his contemporaries and over the

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