Nowadays the journey from Mantua to Madrid may be accomplished without extraordinary exertion in forty-eight hours, but three hundred years ago such a journey must have savoured of adventure, more particularly as the painter-diplomat was in charge of the splendid presents sent to Philip by the Duke. Nearly a year passed before Rubens returned to Mantua. His mission executed, he was rewarded with the grant of a regular income, and after executing some more work at home to the complete satisfaction of his patron, he returned to Rome, this time in the company of his brother.
They lived near the Piazza di Spagna, where the Roman models and flower-sellers congregate to this day, and tourists are as the sand upon the sea-shore for multitude. Philip Rubens, smitten by the weakness to which so many men have succumbed before and since, celebrated his journey by writing a book. It was printed by the famous Plantin Press, with one of whose directors Peter Paul had been at school, and was illustrated by the artist. We may suppose that the work Rubens had done in Rome on the occasion of his earlier visit had satisfied its purchasers, for he received another commission for the Chiesa Nuova, but was recalled before it was completed, and taken to Genoa by the Duke of Mantua. However, he soon returned to Rome, where he remained until the close of 1608 and then left for Antwerp, where his mother, who had been living in that city for some years, was dangerously ill. Rubens does not seem to have known how ill she was, for he arrived in Antwerp too late to see her. She was a woman cast in heroic mould, most generous of wives, most devoted of mothers.
[Illustration: PLATE IV.--ISABELLA BRANDT (In the Wallace Collection)
Naturally enough Rubens painted many portraits of his first wife. There is the delightful work in the Pinacotek at Munich where the painter sits by her side, there are others in the Uffizi at Florence, and the great Hermitage Gallery at St. Petersburg.]
Perhaps the shock of her death awoke Rubens to the disadvantages attaching to the paid service of any man, perhaps he was beginning to realise his own quality and to know that he could stand alone. Perhaps he saw, too, that Italy had taught him as much as his years would allow him to assimilate, enough to make a man of mark in Antwerp. We have no certain information on these points, we can do no more than make surmises, but we do know that Rubens wrote to the Duke of Mantua, thanking him for all the favours and marks of confidence that he had received, and acquainting him with his decision to resign from his service. With the return to Antwerp the era that opened with the visit to Venice eight years before comes to a close, and we enter upon the most strenuous period of the artist's life.