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DOI Artikel:Jaffé, Michael: Rubens drawings in the Warsaw University Library
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18861#0100
Edward's death in 1895, a bachelor without issue, the property and title passed to a nephew, Sir
Henry Charles John Bunbury, who sold off the chattels as snccessive Christie auctions; the „old
master" paintings on 15 June 1901. The Rubens of Ambrogio Spinola was not among these; and
the picture seems to have been one of those destroyed later by being laid out recklessly on a snow
covered lawn one night when the Bunbury house at Mildenhall caught fire. At any rate it has
disappeared. So we depend upon a black and white plate in The Graphic and the description of
the colours given by Smith sixty years before. Can General Bunbury, who campaigned in Holland
in 1799, have been unawarc that his Rubens portrait represented the famous generał who besieged
Breda? Smith in 1830 was unaware: but by 1891 the Bunbury Rubens was known to be of
Spinola.
Close comparison of the Bunbury painting ar.d the Warsaw drawir.g shows just how subtly
the pattern of the former deviates from the latter. Rubens made some sign.ificant adjustments
in the movement of folds and chiaroscuro on the clothing; and he added splen.did. paraphernalia,
the hangings, and the pillar. There are obvious changes in the rumpling of the cloth on the bonnet
and its long lappet, on the exposed sleeve and on the man.tie which cascades either side of the left
forearm; likewise in the lighting and shading along the front of the bonnet and of the mantle near
to the ruff. These and other revisions make elear that the Warsaw drawing is nota ricordo, but
a preparatory study; in effect a highly finished modello for the painting, although it could also
have served the purposes of an engraver. The sweep and fali of the painted hangings is to be
understood as a swagger frame to the magnilicently caparisoned figurę, a relationship whieh
demanded the simplification from drawing to painting of the drapery movement at his arms.
This implies that the picture has not been cut from a full-lenght, but that it was inteuded to be
as it appears in the late nineteenth century reproduction. If Rubens had a plan to paint the
portrait, or to have it engraved, as a whole figurę corresponding to the Warsaw drawing, he chan-
ged his mind. Either the painter or his august sitter preferred a three-quarter length presentation,
su eh as he used for the two well known yariants of Spinola's portrait in half armour; one from the
Nostitz collection which belongs now to the National Gallery in Pragnę8, owners also of his mas-
terly study in oils on paper for the sitter's head and ruff9; the other which has come to the Brun-
swick Museum from Herzog Anton Ulrich10 (figs. 5, 6, 7).
Rubens greatly admired Spinola, as we know from. his correspondence. It is not surprising that
he should have painted several portraits of łuta, including one which he retained in his own collec-
tion and which was inventoried in his house when he died11. He portrayed him not only accoutred
as Captain General, the commander of the Spanish troops in the Netherlands, but decked out in
the ceremoniał dress of one of the great knightly orders of Europę. It appealed to the painter's
assiduously developed sense of history to depict this patrician mercenary of his own day, a scion
of the family which had employed him in Genoa, in the guise of some Burgundian grandee of two
centuries past. We may turn in Rubens's so-called „Costume Book" to such a figurę as that of
Antoine, Duke of Brabant, younger son of Philippe le Hardi12 (fig. 8). Ąntoine fell at Agincourt,
8. Inv. No. D04278, oils on oak panel, 116,5 X 85 cm. See J. Śip and O. J. Blazićek, 17 th Century Flemish Painting, London,
1963, no. 46, repr. in colour.
9. Hitherto unpublished. Oils on paper, moim ted on canvas, 116,5 X 85 cm. I am grateful to Dr. Sip for permission to publish
this head study, recognised by me as painted by Rubens in preparation for the Brunswick and Prague portraits of
Ambrogio Spinola.
10. R. Oldenbourg, Rubens. Klassiker der Kunst, Stuttgart/Berlin, 1921, 289.
11. J. Denuce, De Antwerpsche „Konstkamers", Antwerp, 1932, 60, no. 98.
12. A. M. Hind, Catalogue of Drawings by Dutch and Flemish Masters preserred in tlie Department of Prints and Drauings in
the British Museum, London, 1923, no. 119 (3), pl. XVIII.
90
Henry Charles John Bunbury, who sold off the chattels as snccessive Christie auctions; the „old
master" paintings on 15 June 1901. The Rubens of Ambrogio Spinola was not among these; and
the picture seems to have been one of those destroyed later by being laid out recklessly on a snow
covered lawn one night when the Bunbury house at Mildenhall caught fire. At any rate it has
disappeared. So we depend upon a black and white plate in The Graphic and the description of
the colours given by Smith sixty years before. Can General Bunbury, who campaigned in Holland
in 1799, have been unawarc that his Rubens portrait represented the famous generał who besieged
Breda? Smith in 1830 was unaware: but by 1891 the Bunbury Rubens was known to be of
Spinola.
Close comparison of the Bunbury painting ar.d the Warsaw drawir.g shows just how subtly
the pattern of the former deviates from the latter. Rubens made some sign.ificant adjustments
in the movement of folds and chiaroscuro on the clothing; and he added splen.did. paraphernalia,
the hangings, and the pillar. There are obvious changes in the rumpling of the cloth on the bonnet
and its long lappet, on the exposed sleeve and on the man.tie which cascades either side of the left
forearm; likewise in the lighting and shading along the front of the bonnet and of the mantle near
to the ruff. These and other revisions make elear that the Warsaw drawing is nota ricordo, but
a preparatory study; in effect a highly finished modello for the painting, although it could also
have served the purposes of an engraver. The sweep and fali of the painted hangings is to be
understood as a swagger frame to the magnilicently caparisoned figurę, a relationship whieh
demanded the simplification from drawing to painting of the drapery movement at his arms.
This implies that the picture has not been cut from a full-lenght, but that it was inteuded to be
as it appears in the late nineteenth century reproduction. If Rubens had a plan to paint the
portrait, or to have it engraved, as a whole figurę corresponding to the Warsaw drawing, he chan-
ged his mind. Either the painter or his august sitter preferred a three-quarter length presentation,
su eh as he used for the two well known yariants of Spinola's portrait in half armour; one from the
Nostitz collection which belongs now to the National Gallery in Pragnę8, owners also of his mas-
terly study in oils on paper for the sitter's head and ruff9; the other which has come to the Brun-
swick Museum from Herzog Anton Ulrich10 (figs. 5, 6, 7).
Rubens greatly admired Spinola, as we know from. his correspondence. It is not surprising that
he should have painted several portraits of łuta, including one which he retained in his own collec-
tion and which was inventoried in his house when he died11. He portrayed him not only accoutred
as Captain General, the commander of the Spanish troops in the Netherlands, but decked out in
the ceremoniał dress of one of the great knightly orders of Europę. It appealed to the painter's
assiduously developed sense of history to depict this patrician mercenary of his own day, a scion
of the family which had employed him in Genoa, in the guise of some Burgundian grandee of two
centuries past. We may turn in Rubens's so-called „Costume Book" to such a figurę as that of
Antoine, Duke of Brabant, younger son of Philippe le Hardi12 (fig. 8). Ąntoine fell at Agincourt,
8. Inv. No. D04278, oils on oak panel, 116,5 X 85 cm. See J. Śip and O. J. Blazićek, 17 th Century Flemish Painting, London,
1963, no. 46, repr. in colour.
9. Hitherto unpublished. Oils on paper, moim ted on canvas, 116,5 X 85 cm. I am grateful to Dr. Sip for permission to publish
this head study, recognised by me as painted by Rubens in preparation for the Brunswick and Prague portraits of
Ambrogio Spinola.
10. R. Oldenbourg, Rubens. Klassiker der Kunst, Stuttgart/Berlin, 1921, 289.
11. J. Denuce, De Antwerpsche „Konstkamers", Antwerp, 1932, 60, no. 98.
12. A. M. Hind, Catalogue of Drawings by Dutch and Flemish Masters preserred in tlie Department of Prints and Drauings in
the British Museum, London, 1923, no. 119 (3), pl. XVIII.
90