Those glowing canvases in the “Rubens Gallery” of the Louvre, showing the history and apotheosis of Marie de Medici, were painted at Antwerp.  The joyous, exuberant touch of Rubens is over all, even though the work was done by ’prentice hands.

Peaceful lives make dull biographies, and in prosperity is small romance.

We may search long before finding a life so full to overflowing of material good things as that of Rubens.  All he touched turned to gold.  From the time he returned to Antwerp in Sixteen Hundred Eight to his death in Sixteen Hundred Forty, his life-journey was one grand triumphal march.  His many diplomatic missions were simply repetitions of his first Spanish embassy, with the Don John incident left out, for Don John seems to have been the only man who was not at home to the gracious Rubens.

Mr. Ruskin has said:  “Rubens was a great painter, but he lacked that last undefinable something which makes heart speak to heart.  You admire, but you never adore.  No real sorrow ever entered his life.”

Perhaps we get a valuable clue in that last line.  Great art is born of feeling, and the heart of Rubens was never touched by tragedy, nor the rocky fastnesses of his tears broken in upon by grief.  In many ways his was the spirit of a child:  he had troubles, but not sufficient to prevent refreshing sleep, and when he awoke in the morning the trials of yesterday were gone.

Even when the helpful, faithful and loving Isabella Brandt was taken away from him by death, there soon came other joys to take the place of those that were lost.

We have full fifty pictures of his second wife:  she looks down at us—­smiling, buxom, content—­from every gallery-wall in Europe.  Rubens was fifty-three and she was sixteen when they were married; and were it not for a twinge of gout now and then, he would have been as young as she.

When Rubens went to England on “an artistic commission,” we see that he captured Charles the First just as he captured the court of Spain.  He painted five portraits of the King that we can trace.  The mild-mannered Charles was greatly pleased with the fine portrait of himself bestriding the prancing cream-colored charger.

Several notable artists, Sir Joshua Reynolds among them, have complimented the picture by taking the horse, background and pose, and placing another man in the saddle—­or more properly, taking off the head of Charles the First and putting on the head of any bold patron who would furnish the price.  In looking through the galleries of Europe, keep your eye out for equestrian portraits, and you will be surprised to see on your tab, when you have made the rounds, how many painters have borrowed that long-maned, yellow horse that still rears in the National Gallery in London, smelling the battle afar off—­as Charles himself preferred to smell it.

Rubens had a good time in England, although his patience was severely tried by being kept at painting for months, awaiting an opportune time to give King Charles some good advice on matters political.