Now Don John was a sure-enough duke and could muster quite a retinue of his own on occasion, yet he had small taste for tinsel parades.  Men who have a real good bank-balance do not have to wear fashionable clothes.  Don John was a plain, blunt man who liked books and pictures.  He wanted to see the painter, not a courtier:  and when he heard of the style in which the artist was coming, he just put a boy on a donkey and sent word out that he was not at home.  And further, to show the proud painter his place, he sent along a small purse of silver to pay the artist for the trouble to which he had been.  The rebuke was so delicate that it was altogether lost on Rubens—­he was simply enraged.

* * * * *

In all, Rubens spent eight years in the service of the Duke of Mantua.  He had visited the chief cities of Italy, and was familiar with all the art of the golden ages that had gone before.  When he left Italy he had to take advantage of the fact that the Duke was in France, for every time before, when he had suggested going, he was questioned thus:  “Why, have you not all you wish?  What more can be done for you?  Name your desire and you shall have it.”

But Rubens wanted home:  Antwerp, his mother, brothers, sister, the broad River Scheldt, and the good old Flemish tongue.

Soon after arriving in Antwerp he was named as Court Painter by Albert and Isabella.  Thus he was the successor of his old master, Van Veen.

He was now aged thirty-two, in possession of an income from the State, and a fame and name to be envied.  He was rich in money, jewels and art treasures brought from Italy, for he had the thrifty instincts of a true Dutchman.

And it was a gala day for all Antwerp when the bells rang and the great organ in the Cathedral played the wedding-march when Peter Paul Rubens and Isabella Brandt were married, on the Thirteenth of October, Sixteen Hundred Nine.  Never was there a happier mating.

That fine picture at Munich of Rubens and his wife tells of the sweet comradeship that was to be theirs for many years.  He opened a school, and pupils flocked to him from all Europe; commissions for work came and orders for altar-pieces from various churches.

An order was issued by the Archduke that he should not leave Holland, and a copy of the order was sent to the Duke of Mantua, to shut off his importunities.

Among the pupils of Rubens we find the name of Jordaens (whom he had first known in Italy), De Crayer, Anthony Van Dyck, Franz Snyder and many others who achieved distinction.  Rubens was a positive leader; so animated was his manner that his ambition was infectious.  All his young men painted just as he did.  His will was theirs.  From now on, out of the thousands of pictures signed “P.  P. Rubens,” we can not pick out a single picture and say, “Rubens did this.”  He drew outlines and added the finishing touches; and surely would not have signed a canvas of which he did not approve.  In his great studio at Antwerp, at various times, fully a hundred men worked to produce the pictures we call “Rubens.”