Burckhardt and Rubens
Recollections or' Rubens. By Jacob Burckhardt. Edited by H. Gerson, The Hague, translated by Mary Hottinger. (Phaidon Press. los. 6d.) IN some dark recess of my library I preserve a soiled volume of Burckhardt's Cicerone which, in my younger days, was the vade mecum of the art-traveller in Italy. The green stains which deface the brown covering remind me of the severe storm which caught us, far from any shelter, as we were crossing the hills between Volterra and San Gimignano—my knapsack being green, and no longer waterproof. I shall never be grateful enough for Cicerone, a scholarly guide-book, a pocket encyclopaedia, containing a complete history of Italian art, in which the reader, through an ingenious system of references, could find out in a moment all he wished to know about any artist and exactly where his works could be seen, a treasure of knowledge and conciseness.
The great Swiss critic's reputation does not rest alone on this Invaluable guide-book. His standard work, The Civilisation of the Renaissance, is even better known today, and, no doubt, the present translation of Erinnerungen aus Rubens will meet with the same popularity. It consists of a series of separate essays published in 1898, a year after the author's death, and gives us a far more enlightening description of the master's art than the more ponderous volumes which have appeared since that date. Fos Burckhardt wears well ; he is one of those rare art-critics who do not appear out of date, like Fromentin or de Goncourt whom the Phaidon Press is also reviving. These were great men of letters who wrote about art ; they were bound by the taste of their generation, not only with regard to the works praised or criticised, but also by their style, the way in which they expressed such praise or criticism. Burckhardt, on the other hand, was not a poet or a " litterateur " interested in art ; he was an art-student eager to impart to other students the enormous knowledge he had accumulated His admira tion for the great Fleming does not express itself in ecstatic adjectives or striking metaphors. He does not try to emulate the master by translating into words the untranslatable composition, movement and colour of his masterpieces. He takes us quietly by the hand and leads us through the landscape of Rubens' works, pointing here to a tree, there to a sunset, and everywhere to the movement of men and beasts ; he leads us also through the palaces and churches of seventeenth-century Europe, covered with religious, allegorical and historical decorations.
These " reminiscences " should be considered as a kind of guide- book, in spite of the fact that the order of contents is frequently broken up. First, the essays succeed each other in chronological order—" Rubens in Italy," " Return to Antwerp," " Growing Fame," " Rubens as Diplomat," " His Family," etc. But our guide soon tires of following a definite plan. He does not attempt to describe the works one by one, as they appear above the historical horizon. He lumps them together according to subject, here under " nudes," male and female, there the putti and the children, then the religious pictures, then mythology, " rapes," allegories, " horses," etc. We may fancy the patient student, towards the end of his life, surrounded with ddcuments, and when these fail him, closing his eyes and remembering . . . remembering. And where is the Rubens expert today who could remember so much, so accurately and with such sensitive perspicacity ?
This clear-sightedness is all the more remarkable since Burckhardt shared many of the prejudices of his time. As a true son of the Renaissance he was ill equipped to appreciate the revolution which took place in Rubens' art because his mind was still dominated by an abstract ideal of classical beauty. Dealing with the problem of Rubens' female nudes, he writes: " He has given us a very curious personal confession of the bounds of the beautiful, which were for him set so wide, in the famous picture known as Het Pelsken,' in the Vienna Gallery, which shows his wife, Helen Fourment, on her way to the bath." Burckhardt explains that we are so fascinated by Helen's " quite wonderful body " and " most delicious head " that " we overlook the fact that the movement and form of the legs and the bladdery pouches of skin on her knees are anything but perfect." (The italics are mine.) Now we (that is all Renaissance or classical-minded people) may overlook this fact, but evidently Rubens did not, because he took great trouble to emphasise it. Consciously or subconsciously he must have felt that those knees were " right," not because they corresponded to a set pattern of beautiful knees, but simply because they were part of Helen, with the head and body and the rest of her Titian did not impart such realistic features to his " Girl in the Fur Cloak," because he never individualised his sitters to the same -extent. He had not, like Rubens, broken loose from the classical tradition.
This is only one of the many examples one might take from this book to show that Burckhardt's instinct was surer than his philo- sophy, and that his taste for life and movement brought him within Rubens' magic circle almost against his better judgement. This translation of Burckhardt's last book and of the letters appended to it fulfils a most useful purpose, and the editor deserves the thanks of all those interested in Rubens' art. Some improvements might, however, be suggested in view of reprints: Notes, correcting errors of fact, should be placed at the bottom of the page ; the illustrations should be completed (there are only 140 plates while 200 works are mentioned and described in the text) ; and the four plates in inadequate colour are an unnecessary concession to the bad taste of people who are not likely to purchase this book.
EMILE CAMMAERTS.
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