$ CORPUS RUBENIANUM LUDWIG BURCHARD PART I THE CEILING PAINTINGS FOR THE JESUIT CHURCH IN A N T W E R P JOHN RUPERT MARTIN CORPUS RUBENIANUM LUDWIG BURCHARD AN ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE RAISONNE OF THE WORK OF PETER PAUL RUBENS BASED ON THE MATERIAL ASSEMBLED BY THE LATE DR. LUDWIG BURCHARD IN TWENTY-SIX PARTS SPONSORED BY THE CITY OF ANTWERP AND EDITED BY THE “NATIONAAL CENTRUM VOOR DE PLASTISCHE KUNSTEN IN DE XVI de EN XVII de EEUW” R.-A. d’HULST, President - F. BAUDOUIN, Secretary M. DE MAEYER - J . DUVERGER - L. LEBEER - H. LIEBAERS J.-K . STEPPE - W. VANBESELAERE THE CEILING PAINTINGS FOR THE JESUIT CHURCH IN ANTWERP JOHN RUPERT MARTIN PHAIDON LONDON • NEW YORK COPYRIGHT IN BRUSSELS, BELGIUM, BY ARCADE PRESS, 19 68 PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED KINGDOM BY PHAIDON PRESS LTD. J CROMWELL PLACE, LONDON SW 7. SBN 7148 I342 7 PUBLISHED IN THE U.S.A. BY FREDERICK A. PRAEGER, INC. I l l FOURTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, N.Y. IOOO3 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER : 68- 21 258 PUBLISHED WITH THE AID OF A SUBVENTION FROM THE BARR FERREE FOUNDATION DEPARTMENT OF ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRINTED IN BELGIUM - LEGAL DEPOSIT D / 19 6 7 / 0 7 2 1/ 5 CONTENTS FOREWORD VII LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS I SOURCES OF PHOTOGRAPHS 11 ABBREVIATIONS 13 AUTHOR’S PREFACE 19 INTRODUCTION 2 1 I. THE BUILDING OF THE “ MARBLE TEMPLE” AND THE “ BRAVE PICTURES OF RUBENS MARRING” 2 3 II. THE CATASTROPHE OF 1718 AND THE WORKOF THE COPYISTS 44 III. DESCRIPTION OF THE CYCLE 54 IV. THE ICONOGRAPHY OF THE CEILING PAINTINGS l95 APPENDIX I : THE CONTRACT BETWEEN RUBENS AND FATHER TIRINUS FOR THE CEILING PAINTINGS OF THE JESUIT CHURCH 2 13 APPENDIX II : EXTRACTS FROM THE ACCOUNT BOOK OF THE JESUIT CHURCH 220 INDEXES : I. COLLECTIONS 223 II. SUBJECTS 228 III. OTHER WORKS BY RUBENS MENTIONED IN THE TEXT 234 IV. NAMES AND PLACES 2 3 7 PLATES 243 FOREWORD On the 7th of September i960, Dr. Ludwig Burchard died in London; he had devoted his entire life to the history of art. No branch of this discipline remained unknown to him. His solid classical training and his great knowledge made it possible for him to penetrate into the moSt remote fields. Nevertheless, his attention was drawn mainly to the art of Northern Europe and especially to Rubens. For years he collected and Studied documentary material concerning the artist, worked at the reconstruction of his life and his works, and analysed his immense produc­ tion. This gained him universal recognition and eSteem as the preeminent specialist on the great Flemish painter. Ludwig Burchard was born in Mainz on the 31st of May, 1886. He Studied at the universities of Munich, Heidelberg and Halle-Wittenberg, graduating in 1917 with a thesis on "Die holländischen Radierer vor Rembrandt” . It was precisely through this specialized Study that he came to be interested in Rubens : indeed, many of the Dutch engravers whom he Studied in connection with his thesis had made engravings after compositions of the great master, sometimes even under his immediate direction. In the 1920’s, when he was editor of Thieme-Becker’s Allge­ meines KünStler-Lexikon, he wrote his firSt articles in periodicals, bringing to light several unknown paintings and drawings by Rubens. These immediately aroused great interest. At the same time, he completed the volume of the Klassiker der Kuniï which had been left unfinished owing to the premature death of Rudolf Oldenbourg. It was at this moment that he conceived the plan of compiling a new critical catalogue of the works of Rubens. The preparation of this Magnum Opus was to occupy him fully until his death. He did not live to see it published. It is true that at one point he decided to publish the results of his Studies; in 1939 a prospectus was even issued, announcing “The Work of Peter Paul Rubens” , an illustrated catalogue of the paintings, draw­ ings and engravings, in six volumes; but the war broke out, forcing him to interrupt his activities. His material was deposited in a safe place outside London, where he had settled in 1937 after leaving Germany. After the war, new impediments arose to prevent Dr. Burchard from Starting the editing of his work. VII Many paintings which until then had not come to the notice of art historians now appeared on the art-market. Others, removed from their bomb-proof shelters, were cleaned and had to be re-examined. Meanwhile, a great many of them had changed hands, and their new whereabouts had to be traced. Others Still remained inaccessible for a long time in Store­ rooms. Dr. Burchard’s State of health, moreover, did not allow him to work with the same intense adivity as before. The sufferings he had to endure in his laSt years in Germany and the hardships of the war had aflfed- ed him deeply. But the main reason why he did not publish his Magnum Opus lies deeper, in his own personality : in his extreme scrupulousness, his never satisfied queSt for more detailed and more solid information, his critical attitude towards brilliant, but often superficial interpretations. Up to the lad days of his life, he was making excerpts from the literature on art, ordering photographs and keeping up a vad correspondence with colleagues, museums and colledors. Nearly every Monday morning one would meet him in the “Tube” , on his way from Hampdead to London in order to visit exhibitions or to see paintings in the sale-rooms or at the premises of the art-dealers. Visitors came to him every day at 23, Cannon Place, to submit art objeds to him and to ask for his opinions. Dr. Burchard published some of his important discoveries in thor­ oughly documented articles; others were embodied in the exhibition catalogues that he compiled, modly at the end of his life. The major part of the results of his research, however, has remained hidden in his papers. It is underdandable that after his death it was the main concern of his widow to publish the Rubens material as a podhumous work of her late husband. Mrs. Burchard who, in her own unrecognized way, contributed so much to its creation, donated the documentation to the City of Antwerp, which consented to undertake this publication in colla­ boration with the “Nationaal Centrum voor de Pladische Kunden in de 16de en de 17de eeuw” . She also took into account that her husband considered the City of Antwerp, where Rubens created the greated part of his work, as the mod logical reding place for his material. The con- trads concerned were signed in London on July 4th 1962, but only went into full effed after the authorizations required by the Belgian Government. These authorizations were granted by Royal Decree on June 14th 1963. VIII In November of the same year the Rubens material was shipped to Antwerp, where it was Stored in the Museum Ridder Smidt van Gelder. It forms the nucleus and the moSt important part of the “Rubenianum” , the centre for documentation on Rubens and Flemish art of his time, which the City Authorities of Antwerp have created. This institution is located only temporarily at the Museum, and will be transferred to the Kolveniershuis (House of the Arquebusiers), a historical building which is adjacent to the garden of the Rubens House and which will be restored in a not too distant future. Once the documentation had been accommodated in the Museum Ridder Smidt van Gelder, a Start was made on the preparatory work which had to precede the publication of the critical catalogue. Thousands of unclassified notes and excerpts from books and catalogues were arranged according to subjed. The data published after Dr. Bur chard’s death were added to the documentation and the voluminous specialized library was listed on filing-cards, to make its use easier. Only then did it become possible to think about the plans for publication. It goes without saying that for publication an effort has been made to adhere, as far as possible, to the original intentions of the eminent art historian who brought together the immense amount of material without which the critical catalogue would have been inconceivable. The views of Dr. Burchard are known to us through the prospedus issued in 1939. As this text contains in a certain sense the justification of the work we have undertaken, and as it has also served as a guiding principle for its organization, we prefer to reprint it here in extenso : “The firSt attempt to describe the artistic heritage of Rubens was that made by John Smith in 1830, published without illustrations and cataloguing the artist’s paintings according to the colledions in which they then were. “Fifty years later Max Rooses issued his monumental “Œuvre de Rubens” (Antwerp 1886-1892), arranging the material according to subjed; beginning with the religious scenes and ending in the fourth volume with the landscapes. The drawings were treated by him sep­ arately in a fifth volume and, in all, 430 plates were given tot the 1 591 items. IX “Since then another half century has passed, and with the coming tercentenary of the master’s death the time is ripe to attempt the task once more. “Where Rooses needed five volumes, the present publication might have needed many more, to include the vaft amount of new material that has come to light in the laft fifty years; but in the modern form of an illustrated catalogue, in which so much detailed description can be replaced by illustration, it has been found possible to reftrid the number of volumes to six.