It was in the midst of this social upheaval that the young Peter Paul Rubens found his calling. In Antwerp he was introduced to the Mannerist style, which still maintained its grip on the art world. In 1600 he took his budding talents to Italy, and upon his arrival in Mantua he was promptly retained by the Duke, Vincenzo Gonzaga (great-grandson of Isabella d’Este), and his wife, Eleanor de Medici, as their court painter. But this was not the Mantua of Isabella d’Este’s day. When she was a young woman in the 1490s looking for a young girl “as black as possible,” black people were a novel sight.6 Now, a hundred more years into the African slave trade, they were much more commonplace.7
Rubens had little time to reflect on the African presence in Italy. Shortly after taking up the post of court painter for the Gonzagas, he was sent on a mission by Vincenzo to deliver copies of Raphael’s masterworks to Philip II, king of Spain.8 The stated aim was to put the Mantuan court in the good graces of the fickle young Spanish king. But there was a furtive little side project that made Vincenzo giddily await the artist’s return.
Before his appointment as court painter for the Gonzagas, Rubens had been largely known for his altarpieces, expansive religious mise-en-scènes that were majestic in their depiction of tragedy. Vincenzo was no doubt pleased to have Rubens’s services to animate biblical allegories or dignify members of the court. But the duke was also interested in having Rubens help him round out what was known as his “Gallery of Beauties.”9 The duke had filled his gallery with portraits of young women who had been anointed the best-looking ladies of the court. Part of Rubens’s mission on his circuitous route through Madrid and Paris was to find and set to canvas additional pretty young ladies for the duke’s private collection.10 Rubens did not disappoint on his primary mission, and it is doubtful that he failed to complete his secret side assignment.
That his considerable talent would be devoted to painting handsome young ladies did not deter Rubens from reveling in his new appointment. Lacking the pedigree of the average court official, the artist was pleased to have been given the position, not to mention its attendant salary. Over time, however, his role as one of the many contributors to the duke’s collection of what some deemed “high-end soft-core pornography” would come to distress him.11 In the end, fatigued by his missions and commissions, and dissatisfied with his life in Mantua, Rubens successfully petitioned the duke to be relocated to Rome. There, disillusioned with Vincenzo’s prurient whims, he returned to painting the altarpieces that were the launching pad for his early career.12
Despite his expressed disdain for the duke’s libidinous interest in painted lovelies, it may have been his time in Mantua that led Pietro Paolo Rubens—for his time in Rome led him to Italianize his name—to become fixated with feminine beauty. After his return to Antwerp in 1608, he became more invested in its articulation and portrayal. Arguably, the performance of his duties at Mantua triggered a latent desire to celebrate (or objectify) women’s bodies. And while Rubens was becoming publicly recognized as a gentleman and a scholar, his side commissions contributed to local speculation that he could turn any dowdy duchess into a “Venus” with just a few strokes of his brush.13
Sometime after 1609, when he officially terminated his service in Mantua and became court painter for the Archduke Albert of Brussels, Rubens returned to painting beautiful women. These portraits, however, had the cultural sanction of being elevated. Instead of painting the young maidens he came across at court, he now, like the masters of the High Renaissance, painted ancient goddesses and biblical queens. This was the sort of high art that inspired an admiration of one’s talent.
One work he painted upon his return to Antwerp was The Four Rivers of Paradise (1615). The portrait features four male river gods peacefully relaxing with water nymphs, as nearby children make merry with earthly creatures.14 There is also clear biblical symbolism, as the gods and nymphs recline harmoniously at the intersection of four rivers named in the Bible: the Nile, the Ganges, the Tigris, and the Euphrates.15 Rubens created this work during the twelve-year truce between the Spanish Netherlands and Flanders. The painting celebrated the peace between the two sides and offered an allegory of the abundance made possible through unification. It also contained the artist’s none-too-veiled hope that his own river town of Antwerp might, in these tenuous times of peace, return to its prewar glory.16
The Four Rivers of Paradise, inspired by Rubens’s return to Antwerp, was one of two portraits he painted that year to feature an African woman. The woman in The Four Rivers of Paradise is an Ethiopian nymph, the consort for the river god of the Nile. Her body is largely obscured by the deep blue cloth adorning her frame. But what is visible of her upper torso indicates that she has the same enviable undulating curves as the fair-skinned nymphs.
Rubens’s portrayal of an African woman in The Four Rivers of Paradise reveals the influence of Renaissance masters a century earlier. But unlike many earlier artists, Rubens portrayed an African woman who bears no marking of an inferior social status. On her head she wears not the simple headdress that would have been given her by Titian or Dürer but a tiara with glistening jewels. She is not wearing bedraggled clothes nor clutching a humbling dustcloth. Instead, she is covered with a luxurious blanket and held lovingly by the (white) god of the river Nile. In all these respects, this African woman is the physical and social equivalent of the white women depicted.17
The Four Rivers of Paradise in many ways represented a typical artistic portrayal of African women in the Low Countries at the time. During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, artists from the region typically lacked access to live models and had taken to making black women appear simply as dark-skinned Europeans.18 In this respect, the portrait did reflect the era and environs, but it was not representative of Rubens’s overall take on black women.
Figure 2.2. Peter Paul Rubens, The Four Rivers of Paradise, 1615. Image courtesy of Art Resource, New York.
A very different treatment of black femininity can be seen in another work depicting a black woman, Venus in Front of the Mirror. Produced during the same year as The Four Rivers of Paradise, Venus in Front of the Mirror is one of his most iconic works. In the portrait, a voluptuous Venus sits in a garden with her back to the viewer. The dimpled flesh of her ample backside is partially covered by a shimmering white cloth. On her left is an impish winged cupid, who holds up a mirror so that Venus might admire her own beauty. In looking at herself, she meets the viewer’s gaze in an unabashed recognition of our presumed approbation. On her right is her black maidservant. Her kinky hair is visible under a white cap. A single braid from the left side of her head barely stretches over the cap to connect with the other braid from the right. Her short curly hair is contrasted with Venus’s long, straight blonde hair, which the maidservant holds in apparent admiration. And, while caressing Venus’s sleek locks, the handmaiden lifts the flaxen hair to give the audience a better view of Venus’s hindquarters.
Figure 2.3. Peter Paul Rubens, Venus in Front of the Mirror, 1615. Image courtesy of Art Resource, New York.
The message of Venus in Front of the Mirror and that of Bathsheba, completed in 1635, are in striking contrast to that of The Four Rivers of Paradise. In the former two, black women serve as a mirror for white women’s beauty. Their small, lean frames and short, coiled hair are used to communicate not just difference but destitution, a sense of something wanting. By contrast, the well-apportioned physiques and abundant