Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie (17.1976)

I

Michael Jaffe

RUBENS DRAWINGS IN THE WARSAW UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

In. the Print Room of the Uiiiversity Library at Warsaw are two sheets of drawing by Rubens.
One belonged early in. the nineteenth century to the collection of the „Society of the Frien.ds of
Science" in the City; the other to the Royal Collection of Poland. The first, sketchily drawn in
chalk and accented with brushstrokes of brown ink in the darks, exemplifies Rubens's manner of
the late 1630s. Both sides have been well published and ilhtstrated1. The recto shows a group of
three elegantly dressed young women, attended. each by a putto who tugs at her skirts, while the
central figme of the group is about to be crowned. The verso shows three young women all but
nude the composition being tried again at the right. The subjects have been identified: for the
recto Psyche and her sislers; for the verso, with more con.fiden.ee, The Three Graces (figs. 1, 2).

The otber sheet until recent years lay unidentified and effectively unremarked, despite the old,
perhaps seventeenth century inscription, „Rubens delin.2" (fig. 3). It is indeed a masterly study
from life drawn by him in black chalk, heightened with white chalk, and used for a portrait in
oils of the Marchese Ambrogio Spinola as a Knight of the Golden Fleece'3 (fig. 4). Our knowledge of
the appearance of the finished portrait is conf ined to a reproduction of the painting most probably
but not certainly an original by Rubens's own hand. This was published by The Graphic on
20 June 1891. That year it was exhibited in London, in the Exibition of Works by Old Masłers, as the
property of Sir Edward Herbert Bunbury, the ninth baronet ot his line. It is undoubtedly the
same picture as John Smith'1 describes as the first item in the Addcnda to his Catalogue Raisonne
of 1830, a canvas 131 x 123 cm; although Max Rooses5 in. the preceding year confused it, in his
fourth volume of L'Oeuvre de P.P. Rubens, with quite a different portrait in the collection of Sir
Thomas Sebright at Beechwood, which Waagen had noted, and which was also described as
„Un homme appuye sur une canne". What Smith knew in the collection of Sir Henry Bunbury, fa-
ther of Sir Edward, he describes as: „Portrait of a Gentelman (probably of a Genoese ambassador
to the Court of Spain) when about sixty years of age, of a thin countenance, represented in a three-
-ąuarter view, with scanty beard, moustachios and giey hair. He has on a marone coloured silk
bonnet with fuli lappets at the sides, edged with gold lace, and rich silk robe of the same colour;
a fuli ruff adorns the neck and the Order of the Golden Fleece, appended to a gold chain set with
jewels, is suspended in front; the left hand rests on. the top of a cane, and the right is concealed

1. L. Burchard and R.-A d'Hulst, Rubens Draurings, Brusscls, 1963, no. 205, rcpr.

2. T. 174 no. 367, former Royal Collection. Black chalk, heightened with white chalk, 421 X 262 mms, inscribed in ink, lower
left, „Rubens delin", and ,332" scorcd through. The present writer, in 1960, revived the old, probably 17th century,
attribution and identified the subject as Mse. Ambrogio Spinola an a Knight of tlic Golden Fleece (hitherto „anonymous
17th century Flemish, study of a man in Burgundian dress"). I am grateful to the Keeper of Drawings at the University
Library, Warsaw, for pennission to publish tllis drawing.

3. Formcrly Bunbury collection, Suffolk (England). Oils on canvas, 131 X 123 cm. lieproduccd hcre from an illustration in
The Graphic for 20 June 1891 of the painting then in the collection of Sir Edward Bunbury Bt. A. Rodrjgucs Villa, Am-
brosio Spinola, Madrid, 1904, 602, discusses the portrait known to him, from this illustration at least, as „en tamano natu-
ral y cuerpo entcro". Although the mcasurements confirm that it was natural size, it is unlikcly ever to have been of the
whole figurę.

4. J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonne. of the Works of most eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters, II, London, 1830, no. 1369.

5. M. Rooses, UOcuyre de P. P. Rubens, IV, Antwerp, 1890, no. 1147, and 315, no. 1141 (the latter is now in the
collection of Count A. Seilern, 56 Princess Gate, London).

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