rtionately--large
Titanic types, broad schemes and masses of color, great sweeping lines
of beauty. One value of this largeness was its ability to hold at a
distance upon wall or altar. Hence, when seen to-day, close at hand, in
museums, people are apt to think Rubens's art coarse and gross.

There is no prettiness about his type. It is not effeminate or
sentimental, but rather robust, full of life and animal spirits, full
of blood, bone, and muscle--of majestic dignity, grace, and power, and
glowing with splendor of color. In imagination, in conception of art
purely as art, and not as a mere vehicle to convey religious or
mythological ideas, in mental grasp of the pictorial world, Rubens
stands with Titian and Velasquez in the very front rank of painters.
As a technician, he was unexcelled. A master of composition,
modelling, and drawing, a master of light, and a color-harmonist of
the rarest ability, he, in addition, possessed the most certain,
adroit, and facile hand that ever handled a paint-brush. Nothing could
be more sure than the touch of Rubens, nothing more easy and
masterful. He was trained in both mind and eye, a genius by birth and
by education, a painter who saw keenly, and was able to realize what
he saw with certainty.

Well-born, ennobled by royalty, successful in both court and studio,
Rubens lived brilliantly and his life was a series of triumphs. He
painted enormous canvases, and the number of pictures, altar-pieces,
mythological decorations, landscapes, portraits scattered throughout
the galleries of Europe, and attributed to him, is simply amazing. He
was undoubtedly helped in many of his canvases by his pupils, but the
works painted by his own hand make a world of art in themselves. He
was the greatest painter of the North, a full-rounded, complete
genius, comparable to Titian in his universality. His precursors and
masters, Van Noort (1562-1641) and Vaenius (1558-1629), gave no strong
indication of the greatness of Ruben's art, and his many pupils,
though echoing his methods, never rose to his height in mental or
artistic grasp.

[Illustration: FIG. 78.--VAN DYCK. PORTRAIT OF CORNELIUS VAN DER
GEEST. NAT. GAL. LONDON.]

Van Dyck (1599-1641) was his principal pupil. He followed Rubens
closely at first, though in a slighter manner technically, and with a
cooler coloring. After visiting Italy he took up with the warmth of
Titian. Later, in England, he became careless and less certain. His
rank