In the gallery here there are eighty-eight pictures of Rubens--some among the very finest he ever painted; for instance, that splendid picture, Castor and Pollux carrying off the daughters of Leucippus, so full of rich life and movement; the destruction of Sennacherib's host; Rubens and his wife, full lengths, seated in a garden; that wonderful picture of the defeat of the Amazons; the meeting of Jacob and Laban; the picture of the Earl of Arundel and his wife, with other figures, full lengths;[35] and a series of the designs for the large paintings of the history of Marie de' Medici, now in the Louvre. His group of boys with fruits and flowers, exhibits the richest, loveliest combination of colours ever presented to the eye; and on that wonderful picture of the fallen (or rather _falling_) angels, he has lavished such endless variety of form, attitude, and expression, that it would take a day to study it. It is not a large picture: the eye, or rather the imagination, easily takes in the general effect of tumult, horror, destruction, but the understanding dwells on the detail with still increasing astonishment and admiration. These are a few that struck me, but it is quite in vain to attempt to particularize.
One may begin by disliking Rubens in general, (I think I did,) but one must end by standing before him in ecstacy and wonder. It is true, that always luxuriant, he is often gross and sensual--he can sometimes be brutally so. His bacchanalian scenes are not like those of Poussin, classical, godlike debauchery, but the abandoned drunken revelry of animals--the very sublime of brute licentiousness; and painted with a breadth of style, a magnificent luxuriance of colour, which renders them more revolting. The _physique_ predominates in all his pictures, and not only to grossness, even to ferocity. His picture here of the slaughter of the Innocents, makes me sick--it has absolutely polluted my imagination. Surely this is not the vocation of high art.--And as for his martyrdoms--they are worse than Spagnoletto's.
For all this, he is the TITAN of painting: his creations are "of the earth and earthy," but he has called down fire and light from heaven, wherewith to animate and to illumine them.