It is three o’clock; the clock high up has just struck.  Scarcely even a sacristan makes a sound in the tranquil, clean and clear naves, as Pieter Neefs has represented them, with an inimitable feeling for their solitude and grandeur.  It is raining and the light is fading.  Shadows and gleams succeed each other upon the two triptychs in their thin framing of brown wood fastened without any pomp to the cold and smooth walls of the transepts, and this proud painting only stands out the more amid the violent lights and obscurities contending around it.  German copyists have placed their easels before the Descent from the Cross; there is nobody before the Elevation to the Cross.  This simple fact expresses the world’s opinion as to these two works.

They are greatly admired, almost unreservedly so, and the fact is rare in the case of Rubens, but the admiration is divided.  The chief renown has fallen upon the Descent from the Cross.  The Elevation to the Cross has the gift of touching still more the impassioned, or more deeply convinced, friends of Rubens.  No two works, in fact, could resemble each other less than these that were conceived at an interval of two years, that were inspired by the same effort of mind, and that, nevertheless, so plainly bear the marks of two separate tendencies.  The date of the Descent from the Cross is 1612; that of the Elevation to the Cross is 1610.  I insist upon the date, for it is important.  Rubens was returning to Antwerp, and it was on his disembarkation, so to speak, that he painted them.  His education was finished.  At that moment he had even an excess of studies that were somewhat heavy for him and of which he was going to make free use once for all and then get rid of almost immediately.  Of all the Italian masters he had consulted, each one, be it understood, gave him advice of a sufficiently exclusive nature.  The hot-headed masters authorized him to dare greatly; the severe masters recommended him to keep himself under strong restraint.

His nature, character, and native faculties all tended to a division.  The task itself exacted that he should make two parts of his beautiful gifts.  He felt the expediency of this, took advantage of it, treated of the subjects in accordance with their spirit, and gave two contrary and two just ideas of himself:  on the one hand the most magnificent example we possess of his wisdom, and on the other one of the most astonishing visions of his fire and ardour.  To the personal inspiration of the painter add a very marked Italian influence and you will still better be able to explain to yourself the extraordinary value that posterity attaches to pages which may be regarded as his diploma works and which were the first public acts of his life as the head of a school.

I will tell you how this influence manifests itself and by what characteristics it may be recognized.  But first it is enough for me to remark that it exists, in order that the physiognomy of the talent of Rubens may not lose any of its features at the moment when we examine it.  This is not that he should be positively cramped in canonical formulae in which others would find themselves imprisoned.