Cimon and Pero

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 12 december 2006

Conservation

W.A. Hopman, 1875: canvas lined, varnish regenerated and picture reframed
M. Bijl, 1982: cleaned and restored

Provenance

? Collection Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), Antwerp, 1640 (‘[no.] 141 l’Histoire de la fille qui donne à tetter a son père dans la prison’/A peice of the mayde that gave her father suck in the Prison’);¹Listed in the Specification of works for sale after Rubens’s death, see J.M. Muller, Rubens: The Artist as Collector, Princeton 1989, p. 120. Muller states that only originals by Rubens were included under the heading of his paintings in the Specification. Thus, if the assessment of the Rijksmuseum picture given here is correct, it might be ruled out as that listed there. McGrath (E. McGrath, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XIII (1): Subjects from History, 2 vols., London 1997, II, p. 101 under no. 18), however, believes that it or that at Siegen, see below, are likely candidates to be so identified; Belkin (K. Lohse Belkin and F. Healy, A House of Art: Rubens as Collector, exh. cat. Antwerp (Rubenshuis) 2004, under no. 15), inclines to favour the claim of the Rijksmuseum picture....; collection chevalier Michiel Peeters (1651-1729), of ‘De Sickel’, Kipdorp, Antwerp, no. 7 of his estate inventory (‘Charitas Romana van Rubens fl. 1000’; by division, 17 August 1729, to Catharina de Coninck, widow of Johannes Peeters, on behalf of their children;²The inventory known to have been made by J. P. van Bredael and J. van Halle has not been traced, but the record of the division of the collection, supervised by the notary Pieter Jansz Ockers, is preserved in the Antwerp FelixArchief, no. 2755, as kindly communicated by Bert Schepers, January 2019. The collection was divided by lot by his widow, daughter and daughter-in-law, 17 August 1727; the account in F. Donnet, ‘Un vol de tableaux de Rubens en l’an II de la République: Les collections artistiques de la famille Peeters’, Annales de L’Académie royale d’Archéologie de Belgique 71 (1923), pp. 29-144, esp. pp. 82ff, is inaccurate. Some information concerning the division was given in an affidavit of 22 October 1825 by Charles-Jean Stier (1770-1840) concerning Van Dyck’s portraits of Philippe Le Roy and his wife, Wallace Collection, see J. Ingamells, The Wallace Collection Catalogue of Pictures, IV, Dutch and Flemish, London 1992, nos. P. 79 and P. 94; it stated that the paintings came from ‘la collection de feu mon père, gendre de feu M. Peeters d’Aertselaer qui tenoit ces tableaux de son grandpère le chevalier Michel Peeters par acte de partage devant le notaire P. Oekers à Anvers en date du 17 Aout 1729; see also E. Hinterding and F. Horsch, ‘‘A Small but Choice Collection’: The Art Gallery of King William II of the Netherlands (1792-1849)’, Simiolus 19 (1989), pp. 5-122, under nos. 71/72. Henri-Joseph Stier, the father of Charles-Jean, wrote in a letter of 27 September 1817 to his daughter that the collection had been in his in-law’s family since 1680; see M.L. Callcott (ed.), The Mistress of Riversdale: The Plantation Letters of Rosalie Stier Calvert 1795-1821, Baltimore 1991, pp. 324-25, note 2; Letzter (J. Letzter, ‘The Political Exile of the Stiers: A Belgian Family Weighs the cost of American Democracy 1795-1844’, Atlantic Studies 5 (2008), pp. 51-73, esp. p. 66, note 2) records that the collection was begun by Edouard Peeters (1612-72). her son Jean-Egide Peeters (1725-86), Antwerp, 1763 (‘Chez M. Pieters […] est une Charité Romaine, très belle piéce peint par Rubens & gravée par Bolswert’),³G.P. Mensaert, Le Peintre Amateur et Curieux, ou Description Général des Tableaux des plus habiles Maîtres, qui font l’ornement des Églises, Couvents, Abbayes, Prieurés & Cabinets particuliers dans l’étendre des Pays-Bas Austrichiens, 2 vols., Brussels 1763, p. 261. Jean-Egide Peeters acquired the title of Lord of Cleydael and Aertselaer from his father-in-law in 1747. in whose collection admired by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 4-5 August 1781, and 29 July 1785 (‘A Roman Charity by Rubens’);⁴Described by Reynolds as ‘in his very best manner: the woman […] is one of his most beautiful heads, and it has likewise great expression’, see Sir Joshua Reynolds, A Journey to Flanders and Holland, 1797, ed. H. Mount, Cambridge 1996, pp. 79, 207. his widow Mathilde van den Cruyce Peeters (1727-96), Antwerp, 1786;⁵M.L. Callcott (ed.), The Mistress of Riversdale: The Plantation Letters of Rosalie Stier Calvert 1795-1821, Baltimore 1991, pp. 324-25, no. 2. her son-in-law Henri-Joseph Stier, baron d’Aertselaer (1743-1821) who had married her daughter, Marie Louise Peeters (1748-1804); transferred with the rest of the collection, via Amsterdam, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1794-1800; and then transferred to Riversdale, Bladensburg, Maryland, 1800-1816; returned to Antwerp, June 1816;⁶M.L. Callcott (ed.), The Mistress of Riversdale: The Plantation Letters of Rosalie Stier Calvert 1795-1821, Baltimore 1991, p. 1 and pp. 296-98; J. Letzter, ‘The Political Exile of the Stiers: A Belgian Family Weighs the cost of American Democracy 1795-1844’, Atlantic Studies 5 (2008), pp. 51-73, esp. pp. 52-54. sale Peeters d’Aertselaer de Cleydael (Jean-Egide Peeters (1725-86)), sold on the premises of his son-in-law Henri-Joseph Stier, Antwerp (Regenmortel and Sneyers), 27 August 1817, no. 1 (‘P.-P. Rubens Haut 4 pieds 5 pouces, large 5, 6, T. [127.7 x 159 cm]⁷The discrepancy in the measurements is rightly a concern for McGrath (E. McGrath, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XIII (1): Subjects from History, 2 vols., London 1997, II, note 2 under no. 20), although when the picture was offered some five years later, see below, the size more or less corresponds with that of today. In fact, the discrepancy can be explained by the numbers in each units of measurement having been inadvertently inverted in the catalogue. If the amounts are switched for both the height and width, the measurements are 153 x 186.3 cm. La Charité Romaine […] le vieillard nu jusqu’à la ceinture est couché sur la paille […] il se nourrit avec avidité au sein de sa tendre et courageuse fille’), bought in at frs. 9,050;⁸Copy RKD. M.L. Callcott (ed.), The Mistress of Riversdale: The Plantation Letters of Rosalie Stier Calvert 1795-1821, Baltimore 1991, p. 333, note 4. sale, Henri-Joseph Stier d’Aertselaer, Antwerp (auction house not known), 29 July 1822, no. 2 (‘P.P.Rubens h. 56 p., 8l.; l. 69 p.[measurements in French pouces and lignes, i.e. 153 x 186.3 cm] T. La Charité Romaine [followed by a similar but not identical description]’), fl. 5,300, to Jeronimo de Vries⁹Copy RKD1. for Willem I, King of the Netherlands;¹⁰Copy RKD2. from the Mauritshuis, The Hague; transferred to the museum, 1825;¹¹Then valued at fl. 5300 with SK-A-101 and SK-A-316 in an exchange of seven works. E. Bergvelt, Pantheon der Gouden Eeuw. Van Nationale Konst-gallerij tot Rijksmuseum van Schilderijen (1798-1896), Zwolle 1998, pp. 113-14, n. 181, p. 318, and p. 402 under 1825. on loan to the Rubenshuis, Antwerp, 1951-77; on loan through the DRVK, 1959-79; on loan to the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, 2004-11

ObjectNumber: SK-A-345

The artist

Biography

Peter Paul Rubens (Siegen 1577 - Antwerp 1640)

Peter Paul Rubens was born on the eve of the feast day of the saints Peter and Paul (after whom he was named) – on 28 June 1577 – in Siegen, Westphalia, the son of a Protestant lawyer Jan (1530-1588), who with his wife Maria (1538-1608) had left their native Antwerp in 1568. He died a long professed Catholic in Antwerp on 30 May 1640 after an immensely successful career as a painter, from which he amassed a fortune, and as a public servant in the service of the Archduchess Isabella, the Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, and of his sovereign, her nephew, King Philip IV of Spain.

His oeuvre includes well over a thousand paintings – partly made possible by a well-organized studio – supplemented by an extensive group of drawings and of engravings after his work, the production of which he supervised. Much of his output was of religious subjects, but he also specialized in mythologies; he was an innovative landscape painter and a sympathetic portraitist especially of friends and members of his family. Four elaborate tapestry series were designed by him, and he occasionally followed the then current Antwerp practice of collaborating with other independent artists.

Rubens’s protean genius encompassed other fields: he was well versed in classical literature (like other educated men of his time) and in archaeology; he published a book on contemporary Genoese architecture and contributed to architectural design in Antwerp. An avid collector (and successful dealer) of paintings, classical sculpture, gems, and drawings by other masters, he was an expert iconographer, and a regular contributor of designs for frontispieces. Recent research has shown he was an active investor in property and a generous financier.

Three artists are later recorded as his teachers in Antwerp, where his widowed, and now Catholic mother had returned, of which the last, the learned Otto van Veen (1556-1629) was the most influential. In May 1600, two years after he had become a master in the Antwerp guild of St Luke, he went to Italy, from where he returned at the end of 1608. There he had been employed as court painter to Vincenzo I Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua (1562-1612), for whom he acted as a diplomatic courier to King Philip III of Spain (1578-1621) in 1603. Beside his study of classical and Italian art, he executed large-scale altarpieces in Rome, Mantua and Genoa.

The archducal sovereigns of the Spanish Netherlands appointed him their court painter in 1609; the following year he married Isabella Brant (1591-1626) with whom he had three children. His reputation and clientele became international; after completing the decoration (destroyed) of the aisles and galleries of the Antwerp Jesuit Church, he was commissioned by Marie de Médicis, Queen Mother of France, to paint a cycle of her life (Musée du Louvre) and that of her deceased husband (never completed) for her Luxembourg Palace in Paris. In the 1630s he painted a cycle for the ceiling of the Banqueting Hall in London (in situ) for King Charles I of Great Britain; for the city of Antwerp, he designed the decorations for the Cardinal-Infante’s Joyous Entry into Antwerp and for King Philip IV of Spain, an extensive series (chiefly Museo Nacional del Prado) for the Torre de la Parada, near Madrid. He was ennobled by Philip IV in 1624 and knighted by Charles I in 1630.

Rubens’s public service (conducted in secret early on) for the archduchess began in the early 1620s and became increasingly important. Following a visit to Madrid, he was engaged in high-level diplomatic negotiations in London in 1629-30. Having attended the exiled Dowager Queen Marie de Médicis in the southern Netherlands he largely retired from such service in 1632, two years after his second marriage to Helena Fourment, with whom he had five children.

REFERENCES
C. Ruelens and M. Rooses (eds.), Correspondance de Rubens et documents epistolaires concernant sa vie et ses oeuvres, 6 vols., Antwerp 1887-1909; M. Rooses, L’oeuvre de P.P. Rubens. Histoire et description de ses tableaux et dessins, 5 vols., Antwerp 1886-92; R.S. Magurn, The Letters of Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Cambridge 1955; Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard in 29 parts and multiple volumes of which the last are forthcoming, 1968-; M. Jaffé, Rubens. Catalogo Completo, Milan 1989; J.S. Held, The Oil Sketches of Peter Paul Rubens: A Critical Catalogue, 2 vols., Princeton 1980

Entry

McGrath has reviewed the classical and Renaissance treatments of the subject depicted in the present painting, which is mistakenly called Roman Charity. It derives chiefly from Valerius Maximus (first century CE), who gave it as an example of devotion towards parents (pietas in parentes).¹²E. McGrath, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XIII (1): Subjects from History, 2 vols., London 1997, II, under no. 18, referring to Valerius Maximus, Dicta et Facta, book V, 4, 7 and ext. 1, for which see Valerius Maximus Memorable Doings and Sayings, ed. and translated by D.R. Shackleton Bailey, 2 vols., Cambridge (Mass.)/London 2000, I, pp. 500-03. Valerius’s example from Roman history – his main focus – recorded how a mother, who had been condemned to death but was being more benignly starved by her gaoler rather than executed, was kept alive by her daughter who secretly breast fed her. On discovery of the fact by her gaoler the matter was reported to the authorities, who in recognition of this extraordinary display of filial piety remitted the mother’s capital sentence.

This was Valerius’s Roman Charity; but the subject that was favoured by Renaissance and post-Renaissance artists was the non-Roman example that concerned Pero and her imprisoned, elderly father Cimon (as Peter Paul Rubens would probably have known him, although the name was already recognized in the seventeenth-century as a transposition of Micon);¹³E. McGrath, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XIII (1): Subjects from History, 2 vols., London 1997, II, p. n.5, p. 101. thus Cimon, in a similar predicament to the Roman mother, was saved in the same way by his daughter.

Rubens treated the subject perhaps as many as five times, of which he retained one example for his own collection (see above); no other is found in inventories of seventeenth-century Antwerp estates listed by Duverger. Rubens would have understood the subject as one that illustrated a type of piety or grateful devotion. Indeed his first rendering of the subject, now in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, was owned, perhaps in his lifetime, by Carel van den Bosch, Bishop of Ghent (1597-1665).¹⁴E. McGrath, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XIII (1): Subjects from History, 2 vols., London 1997, II, under no. 18. The artist would have been aware of its erotic appeal. Perhaps he was, too, inspired to emulate the antique painting as recorded in Valerius’s anecdote: ‘People stop in amazement and cannot take their eyes off this scene when they see the painting of it; as they marvel at what is before them the situation of that event long ago is recreated for them …’.¹⁵The original Latin reads: ‘Haerent ac stupent hominum oculi, cum huius facti pictam imaginem vident, casusque antiqui condicionem praesentis spectaculi admiratione renovant, in illis mutis membrorum liniamentis viva ac spirantia corpora intueri credentes …’ The succeeding sentence, as translated by Shackleton Bailey (in Valerius Maximus Memorable Doings and Sayings, ed. and translated by D.R. Shackleton Bailey, 2 vols., Cambridge (Mass.)/London 2000, II, p. 503), would further support the idea of Rubens emulating the antique. But this is secured by a textual emendation by the translator; the translation by McGrath (in E. McGrath, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XIII (1): Subjects from History, 2 vols., London 1997, II, p. 99) is to be preferred.

Of the five extant compositions devised by Rubens, only one – the earliest of these variations (that in the Hermitage already referred to) – seems to be indisputably autograph, circa 1610. The Rijksmuseum picture – although much admired by connoisseurs in the past – seems to be chiefly the work of Rubens’s studio circa 1630. Whether it and a small group of related works were all prepared for by separate modelli is unlikely. They differ chiefly in adjustments to the poses, and the presence or absence of the gaolers – the latter important as a clear reference to the denouement of the story.

The first, perhaps only sketched by the artist, was vertical in format and was probably executed c. 1628 as it was engraved by Willem Panneels (c. 1600-1634) who left Rubens’s studio in 1630 (the master having been absent for some two years). It shows Pero kneeling on the block feeding a seated Cimon. She turns anxiously away as if she has heard the gaoler.¹⁶E. McGrath, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XIII (1): Subjects from History, 2 vols., London 1997, II, under no. 19. It is impossible to devise a sequence of the next three compositions, one of which is known only by a later seventeenth-century engraving,¹⁷E. McGrath, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XIII (1): Subjects from History, 2 vols., London 1997, II, no. 21a. the others being the Amsterdam picture, and that in the Museum des Siegerlandes, Siegen, which is also horizontal in format, but wider and higher than the Amsterdam version even before the addition at the top of a strip of canvas of approximately 25 cm.¹⁸E. McGrath, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XIII (1): Subjects from History, 2 vols., London 1997, II, no. 22. These last three may derive from different proposals drafted and altered by Rubens in a modello, of which there is no record.

In all three compositions, Pero is seated on a masonry block, as is Cimon in the Rijksmuseum version, while in the other two he kneels on the floor. In the Siegen picture, Rubens included Pero’s baby, asleep on the floor, its existence is only implied in the other compositions thus allowing for Pero to lactate. Two interventions in the Rijksmuseum picture, the inclusion of Cimon’s right hand and heel as afterthoughts, establish it as an evolving composition, the chronological sequence of which must remain obscure without close examination of the Siegen picture, in which the hand appears but the heel is covered.

Of the Amsterdam and Siegen versions, McGrath preferred the latter; nevertheless, it is likely that in the former Rubens himself was responsible at least for the white covering of Cimon, his right hand and grey hair, for Pero’s face and the heightening of her hair.¹⁹Belkin sees Rubens’s hand in the flesh areas of the two protagonists, in K. Lohse Belkin and F. Healy, A House of Art: Rubens as Collector, exh. cat. Antwerp (Rubenshuis) 2004, under no. 18. The two works may have been essentially the work of the same studio assistant; certainly the gaolers in both pictures seem to be by the same painter, working in a style rather removed from that of Rubens.

The model for Cimon appears earlier in the composition engraved by Panneels; it may have been intended for use as St Nicholas of Tolentino, as apparent in the first modello at Frankfurt²⁰J.S. Held, The Oil Sketches of Peter Paul Rubens: A Critical Catalogue, 2 vols., Princeton 1980, I, no. 384, II, pl. 375. for the Mystic Marriage of St Catherine of circa 1628. Not dissimilar is the more aged of the two elders in the Munich Susanna and the Elders,²¹R.-A. d’Hulst and M. Vandenven, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, III: The Old Testament, London 1989, no. 65. and the saint kissing Christ’s hand in the Sint Jacobskerk altarpiece of the Virgin and Child with Saints.²²M. Jaffé, Rubens. Catalogo Completo, Milan 1989, no. 1368. The head of Pero, which was particularly admired by Reynolds, may have been inspired by the same model as that employed, for instance, for Venus in the National Gallery Judgement of Paris.²³G. Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: The Flemish School circa 1600 - circa 1900, London 1970, no. 194; M. Jaffé, Rubens. Catalogo Completo, Milan 1989, no. 1084.

As McGrath pointed out, Rubens’s initial point of departure for the composition may well have been Beham’s etchings of Cimon and Pero, although the composition is there in reverse.²⁴E. McGrath, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XIII (1): Subjects from History, 2 vols., London 1997, II, p. 99 and no. 12 and I, fig. 79. She also suggested that the motif of Pero, turning to see if she is being observed, may have been inspired by the painting attributed to Dirck van Baburen (1592/93-1624; York City Art Gallery) which may have been in Antwerp circa 1625.²⁵E. McGrath, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XIII (1): Subjects from History, 2 vols., London 1997, II, under no. 19 and note 3, p. 105.

Gregory Martin, 2022

Literature

E. McGrath, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XIII (1): Subjects from History, 2 vols., London 1997, II, no. 20

Collection catalogues

1827, p. 65, no. 278; 1841, p. 45, no. 269; 1843, p. 52, no. 269; 1853, p. 24, no. 234 [fl. 15,000]; 1864, p. 128, no. 276; 1880, p. 415, no. 484; 1903, p. 231, no. 2066; 1934, p. 249, no. 2066; 1976, p. 484, no. A 345

Citation

G. Martin, 2022, 'workshop of Peter Paul Rubens, Cimon and Pero, c. 1635', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5316

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