1621–40

In the early 1620s Rubens apparently altered his working method drastically. Certain drawing types, including compositional drawings and figure studies, almost disappeared, while other types, and even other techniques, came to the fore. The compositional drawing was largely replaced by the oil sketch, whose numbers rose steeply.98 For the large cycle devoted to the life of Marie de Médicis (altogether, twenty-one lifesize paintings with complicated compositions full of figures), for instance, only two double-sided compositional drawings are known—and twenty-eight oil sketches.99 The most likely explanation for this change is that as an older, more experienced artist, Rubens no longer needed compositional drawings all the time, whereas oil sketches, which included color, became more and more vital: patrons had to see them for approval, of course, and perhaps more important, they were needed to get his assistants started. At this stage of Rubens's career, saving time was essential.

A good example of a compositional drawing from the 1620s is the study for The Majority of Louis XIII (Louvre, Paris), one of the rare works on paper in preparation for the Medici cycle.100 The composition is jotted down in quick, summary lines of pen and brown ink. For the lower part of the ship the artist needed only three lines; for the royal couple, the allegorical figures, and all the rigging, just a few more. The same economy can be observed in earlier drawings, such as the Martyrdom of Two Saints (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam)101 and the Continence of Scipio (cat. no. 33). From the 1620s on, however, we have only such hasty compositional drawings. The Virgin and Child Adored by Saints (cat. no. 34 recto), preparatory to Rubens's 1628 altarpiece in the Antwerp church of Saint Augustine (fig. 77), also displays this cursoriness, and its seemingly haphazard arrangement of apparently unrelated groups of figures illustrates beautifully how Rubens's thinking and sketching went together. Comparable sketches in which we can observe the evolution of Rubens's thinking are the Centaurs Embracing (Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery, London)102 and Seventeen Studies of Dancing Peasants for a Kermis (cat. no. 103). Again, such thinking on the page can be seen earlier, in Three Sketches for Medea and Her Children of 1600–1604 (cat. no. 8 verso) and Studies for the Death of Dido (fig. 47), for example, but the style of the later examples is freer, the scale is larger, the lines are thinner, and the mind that is drawing seems as if in a trance.

The scarcity of drawings by Rubens after the model in the early 1620s is not so easily explained as the diminishing number of compositional drawings. In his many painted works of these years—the Medici cycle, the ceiling paintings for the Jesuit church (today Saint Charles Borromeo) in Antwerp, the series on the lives of Achilles and Constantine the Great, and many individual paintings—dozens and dozens of new figures appear, but we know of only one or two drawings after the model from this period.103 Were they lost as a group early on? Did Rubens not need any? It has been argued, for instance, that the paintings of the Medici cycle contain many quotations after classical sculptures.104 Perhaps Rubens was indeed able to come up with the figures he needed with the help of his large drawings collection, which was an inventory of almost every famous ancient statue. The Study of a Seated Woman Turned to the Right (cat. no. 109) is a rare late drawing by Rubens from the model. This sheet is exceptional, however, since it is drawn, unusually, mostly in red (rather than black) chalk; the sitter's attitude is so natural that one doubts there was any deliberate posing; and there is no picture for which it was the preparatory drawing. It is in a way comforting that from this later period we have only this one extraordinary study. It would be disconcerting if we had, on the contrary, only one "normal" model study, because that would imply that Rubens continued making drawings after the model as usual and that they were indeed lost early on.

Yet Rubens did not abandon drawings after the model altogether. A special group of nine figure studies from the early 1630s has been preserved (see cat. nos. 90, 91, 92); they are all related to one painting, today called the Garden of Love, but in Rubens's time known as Conversation à la mode (Conversation of Young Women). There is no evidence of such careful preparation by Rubens since his studies for the Raising of the Cross of 1610–11.105 The painting is something of a novelty, because it depicts the old medieval theme of the garden of love—in this case, especially of married love—but the clothes, the hairstyles, and the architecture of the garden pavilion are obviously seventeenth-century. One is inclined to think that Rubens felt the need to make figure studies precisely because he transplanted the scene to "modern times." It is as if Rubens the history painter wanted to get a grip on modern, à la mode clothing. The great attention to costume sets these drawings apart from Rubens's earlier drawings, in which the models rendered were almost nude and in which the right posture and the appropriate facial expression were of the essence. The trois crayons technique also distinguishes these drawings from the artist's earlier drawings after the model. Although Rubens had been using this technique more often in his later work, he usually reserved the red chalk for flesh parts; in the Garden of Love studies he also used it for textiles, as one can see in the dazzling red mantle in Young Man Descending Stairs (cat. no. 92). Stylistically, these sheets show a freedom and boldness unparalleled in Rubens's earlier drawings from the model. Although the sheets are more drapery studies than proper studies from the model, the artist did pay attention to the faces, and in the end there is a beautiful equilibrium between the features of the faces and those of the body. The mastery of the three chalks, a facility and daring of line, and a tenderness of human gesture and emotion make the studies for the Garden of Love truly magnificent.

While compositional drawings and drawings after the model significantly declined in the 1620s, one category in Rubens's drawn (and painted) oeuvre grew: portraits. During his years in Italy Rubens—young and looking for new clients—had painted several portraits, but once back in Antwerp he engaged less often in portraiture, which in the general hierarchy of painting was the lowest of the pictorial genres. From the 1620s, however, a steady stream of portraits left the artist's studio. Rubens at that time was an internationally acclaimed painter, and from 1621 he was also a highly esteemed diplomat, who had the run of the courts in London, Paris, and Madrid. Princes were eager to have their portraits painted by Rubens, and of course the diplomat could not refuse. The artist portrayed almost all the rulers of the aforementioned courts, including many members of their immediate family and people in their entourage (see cat. nos. 76, 77, 78, 79, and 80). At more or less the same time, Rubens started on a sequence of portraits of his own family (see cat. nos. 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, and 88).

The surviving drawings for Rubens's early portraits executed in Italy, as noted above (see the discussion under "Drawings for Portraits"), display an array of different techniques in a variety of media. Since from the 1620s on Rubens drew portraits mainly in chalk, a comparison of one of his early portrayals in chalk with a later portrait drawing may help us discern something of the artist's development in this genre. Juxtaposing the Portrait of Ferdinando Gonzaga of 1601–2 (fig. 17) with Nicolaas Rubens Wearing a Red Felt Cap of 1625–27 (cat. no. 85), one does not need to be a connoisseur to see how dramatically the artist's style changed, from careful and precise—many lines are repeated several times in the Gonzaga portrait—to confident and loose. The handling of the light, and consequently the depth, is definitely more convincing in the later drawing. Even the mise-en-page of Nicolaas's portrait seems more daring than that of Ferdinando's. One has to keep in mind, of course, that portraying one's own child is rather different from portraying a prince and the son of one's employer, which Ferdinando's father, the Duke of Mantua, was to Rubens in Italy. And it must be admitted that another drawing from the mid-1620s, for a more official portrait, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham (cat. no. 77), is not as loosely drawn as the portrait of Nicolaas; still, it betrays the same accurate and confident way of drawing, lack of pentimenti, and attention to the play of light on the face. Furthermore, one detects an attempt at subtle psychological insight into the sitter. If Ferdinando is purely a physical presence, Nicolaas and Buckingham are persons with at least a hint of character—pouting lips for the boy and an assured attitude for the English nobleman.

It is in the compositional drawings, drawings from the model, and drawings for portraits that one can follow Rubens's stylistic development, because the artist continued to make these types of drawings throughout his career. Other drawing activities (retouching old master drawings, or overseeing the making of preparatory drawings for reproductive prints and correcting them) and types of drawings (landscapes, designs for book illustrations and title pages) at which Rubens excelled are less suitable for observing changes over time, because there may be too few works in a particular genre, because Rubens's contributions are not always entirely clear, or because he made the sheets within a relatively short period of time.