It was then the custom of those who owned masterpieces to have copies made and present them to various other lovers of the beautiful.  If an honored guest was looking through your gallery, and expressed great pleasure in a certain canvas, the correct thing was to say, “I’ll have my best painter make a copy of it, and send it to you”—­and a memorandum was made on an ivory tablet.  This gracious custom seems to have come down from the time when the owners of precious books constantly employed scribes and expert illuminators in making copies for distribution.  The work done in the scriptoriums of the monasteries, we know, was sent away as presents, or in exchange for other volumes.

Rubens set diligently to work copying in the galleries of Mantua; and whether the Duke was happier because he had discovered Rubens than Rubens was because he had found the Duke, we do not know.  Anyway, all that the young painter had hoped and prayed for had been sent him.

Here was work from the very hands of the masters he had long worshiped from afar.  His ambition was high and his strong animal spirits and tireless energy were a surprise to the easy-going Italians.  The galleries were his without let or hindrance, save that he allow the ladies of the Court to come every afternoon and watch him work.  This probably did not disturb him; but we find the experienced Duke giving the young Fleming some good advice, thus:  “You must admire all these ladies in equal portion.  Should you show favoritism for one, the rest will turn upon you; and to marry any one of them would be fatal to your art.”

Rubens wrote the advice home to his mother, and the good mother viseed it and sent it back.

After six months of diligent work at Mantua we find Rubens starting for Rome with letters from the Duke to Cardinal Montalto, highly recommending him to the good graces of the Cardinal, and requesting, “that you will be graciously so good as to allow our Fleming to execute and make copies for us of such paintings as he may deem worthy.”

Cardinal Montalto was a nephew of Pope Sixtus, and the strongest man, save the Pope, in Rome.  He had immense wealth, great learning, and rare good sense in matters of art.  He was a close friend of the Duke of Mantua; and to come into personal relations with such a man was a piece of rare good fortune for any man.  The art world of Rome now belonged to Rubens—­all doors opened at his touch.  “Our Fleming” knew the value of his privileges.  “If I do not succeed,” he writes to his mother, “it will be because I have not improved my opportunities.”  The word fail was not in his lexicon.  His industry never relaxed.  In Walpole’s “Anecdotes of Painting,” an account is given of a sketchbook compiled by Rubens at this time.  The original was in the possession of Maurice Johnson, of Spalding, England, in Eighteen Hundred Forty-five, at which time it was exhibited in London and attracted much attention.