by Mark Lamster
Charles had learned this lesson the hard way. Two years earlier, he had foolishly departed for Spain while negotiations were still pending for his marriage to the infanta Maria Anna, daughter of Philip III (and niece of the infanta Isabella). Charles, a romantic and impulsive soul, had fallen in love with a portrait of the comely Spanish princess, whom he had never met in person. Despite his better judgment, James I agreed to let his passionate son follow his heart, though he insisted that George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, travel along with Charles as chaperone and chief political aide. Buckingham had by that time established himself as the king’s latest protégé—indeed, they were said to be lovers—a man James felt comfortable trusting with so delicate a mission. That trust, however, was entirely misplaced. Indeed, the king might have suspected just how much trouble was in store when his ardent son and equally fervent intimate surreptitiously departed London wearing fake beards and using the pseudonyms Jack and Tom Smith, the better to surprise the Spanish princess and win her heart. In Madrid, two months later, the folly of their adventure gradually became apparent.
The Spanish public appreciated the prince’s gallant gesture. To travel incognito across half of Europe in the name of love—that was chivalry. As word of Charles’s presence spread through Madrid’s streets, throngs gathered to voice their approval at the House of Seven Chimneys, the residence of the English ambassador, where he and the duke made camp. There were parades, a tour of the Escorial, and a gift of paintings from the magnificent royal collection, a present that included a portrait by Titian of the prince’s namesake, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. (He also received Giambologna’s Samson and a Philistine, previously a gift of political tribute from the Tuscan grand duke Ferdinand de’ Medici to the duke of Lerma.) These ostentatious displays belied the less generous intentions of Spain’s calculating chief minister, Gaspar de Guzmán, the Count-Duke of Olivares. The unannounced arrival of the English prince, a gross breach of diplomatic protocol, gave the count-duke ample pretext to stall the marriage negotiations with Buckingham, during which time he became progressively more insistent on Spanish demands. The count-duke was adamant that Maria Anna, after the wedding, be allowed to freely practice her Catholic faith, despite the general prohibitions against Catholicism in England and the fact that her prospective husband was a Protestant.
Had Charles not rushed off so impetuously, these obstacles might well have been surmounted by his conciliatory father. James was especially desperate for the funds that would come as Maria Anna’s dowry. He also wanted his wayward nephew, Frederick V, restored as the elector palatine in Germany. That title carried with it sovereignty over a large swath of southeastern Germany, a breadbasket that encompassed key military and economic corridors. Frederick was now in exile in Holland—he was actually living in the home of the English ambassador, Rubens’s friend Dudley Carleton—having been forced from his throne in 1620. In his absence, the Palatinate had been divided among the Holy Roman Emperor, the Duke of Bavaria, and the King of Spain. James thought, and not without reason, that Frederick’s restoration might somehow be finagled as part of a carefully brokered marriage contract.
As it was, Charles and Buckingham, stranded in Madrid, had absolutely no leverage to bargain for Frederick’s return to his German throne. Indeed, the two English aristocrats were now prey to the machinations of the Count-Duke of Olivares, who shrewdly exploited the prince’s infatuation with Maria Anna, teasing him with a glimpse of her here and a peek at her there, until Charles was eyeing her, in the words of the count-duke, “as a cat doth a mouse.” Of course, it was Olivares who had Charles trapped and cornered. The prince was in love, but he was in no position to renounce his own church. Charles’s requests to leave Madrid without a marriage deal in place were denied by Olivares, and as summer approached, James was forced to warn his son, in Shakespearean tones, of “the danger of your life by the coming of the heats.” Finally, Charles had no choice but to agree to Spanish terms, and even then he was not allowed to return to England with his bride. There would be an eight-month wait before her departure, to ensure that the terms of the wedding were properly established in England. Inevitably, after his return home, the prince was forced to renounce the agreement. It was a colossal embarrassment, and a deathblow to Anglo-Spanish relations. Maria Anna, at least, did well for herself. In 1631 she married her cousin Ferdinand III, the future Holy Roman Emperor.
IT WAS WITH THAT HISTORY in mind that Charles, having learned his lesson, now chose to wait for his French bride at Dover, on the English coast. Buckingham was dispatched to escort the new queen across the Channel, a job that left him with three weeks in Paris waiting on Henrietta Maria. He spent that time actively, for the duke hoped to take more than just a new queen back with him to England. Buckingham had a taste for precious objects and spent a good amount of his time in France trying to procure them. For his garden, he acquired a selection of rare tropical plants. His attempt to liberate the Mona Lisa from the royal palace at Fontainebleau, however, was politely refused. Da Vinci’s masterpiece was not for sale, but as some consolation he could have his portrait made by Rubens, a specialist in just the kind of visual aggrandizement that appealed to the duke’s immense ego.
Buckingham dressed carefully for his first sitting with Rubens. He was a man who cared about appearances, and knew that his sartorial choices would shape his image for posterity. He wore an elegant black doublet with scalloped white vents and a high collar that flared out to squared ends edged with lace. His hair fell in gentle brown curls that made for a contrast with his short beard, which was precisely clipped into a plunging spade. He was, in fact, so pleased with the work of his French hairdresser that he paid the man’s employer 100 pounds for the right to acquire his services on a permanent basis. Even without all this careful preparation, the duke was undeniably handsome, with strong, sharp features that attracted men and women alike. King James had called him “Steenie,” a reference to the angelic face of Saint Stephen.
Buckingham was accompanied during that sitting by his aide-de-camp, Balthasar Gerbier, who recorded their conversation and catered to the duke’s whims, as necessary. Like Rubens, Gerbier was an artist-diplomat—though not quite as skilled in either capacity—and a native of the Low Countries who had fled that land with his parents to escape religious persecution. Formally, he was the duke’s “master of the horse,” a title that dated back to Roman days but now conferred the status of chief court officer. Beady eyes and a sluice of a nose gave Gerbier a squirrelly appearance that mirrored his pushy, ingratiating personality. He was nevertheless an undeniably nimble political operative, and his penchant for sycophancy extended directly to Rubens, whose career he had been tracking for some time. In 1620 he had even authored a sixty-three-line panegyric to the painter, dubbing him “a shining Phoebus.”
It was nice to be esteemed, but Rubens nevertheless approached his meeting with Buckingham with a certain degree of trepidation. It was no great secret that the duke still harbored a resentment over the failed “Spanish match.” The depth of that resentment was of particular concern insofar as Buckingham, chief minister to Charles and lord high admiral of the English navy, was in a position to launch a military offensive against Spain and its dependencies, including Rubens’s Flemish homeland. At the very least, he could increase the English subsidy to the Dutch, to assist them in their war against Spain. Measuring the duke’s level of antipathy, then, was something that fell directly within the purview of the painter, given his role as an agent in the service of Isabella.
As was his practice, Rubens chatted amicably with his subject as he sketched his portrait. Using quick strokes of black and red chalk, which he accentuated with translucent rushes of white, Rubens gradually brought the duke to life. When the drawing was nearly complete, the artist inked in Buckingham’s pupils with brown pen, giving his eyes a sense of forceful animation. A slight pursing of the lips imbued the sitter with a feeling of calculated seriousness, hinting at arrogance. Rubens had co
rrectly surmised that this was precisely how the duke imagined himself: handsome, commanding, pitiless. Indeed, Buckingham was happy with the result, delighted enough to make it the basis for two formal portraits—one half-length and the other equestrian—to be completed by the painter and his assistants back at his Antwerp studio. For the equestrian portrait alone he agreed to pay 500 pounds. The duke also commissioned from Rubens a ceiling painting for the ceremonial hall of his new home in London, York House. Finally, the duke had learned of the unsurpassed collection of antiquities Rubens had amassed back at his Antwerp home. Might the painter be convinced to part with it, he wondered?
Rubens was shrewd enough, both as a businessman and as a diplomatic operative, to see that Buckingham’s interest might be leveraged into both financial and political capital. Yes, he told the duke, he would be interested in selling, given an appropriate offer. If the duke would like to inspect the marbles, he was of course welcome to do so, or he could have a local representative make an inventory. With that established, Rubens gently nudged the discussion to the delicate matter of politics. The artist admitted his concern that “great difficulties might arise between the Crowns of Spain and Great Britain” and then suggested that “every honest man should do all in his power” to ensure peace. “Since war was a scourge from Heaven, we should do our best to avoid it,” he told the duke. Rubens made a special point to note that Flanders and its regent, the infanta Isabella, were truly innocent bystanders to any conflict between Spain and England. The painter therefore hoped Buckingham would use his influence to “pacify” Charles, the new English king, and otherwise curb his desire for retribution—though he did not say so explicitly.
Buckingham was magnanimous in reply, assuring Rubens that the joy Charles felt over his union with the French princess meant that all memory of the “unfruitful pretensions” of the past—that is, the failed Spanish Match—would be “buried in oblivion.” He did, however, indicate that the situation of the exiled Frederick V, who had been removed from his Palatinate throne by Habsburg forces, was still a “wrong” that “needed a cure.” Rubens countered that Isabella, as a neutral party to this situation, might serve as an honest broker in future discussions on the matter. With that, the sitting came to an amicable conclusion. Negotiations between Buckingham and Rubens regarding the painter’s collection of antiquities would henceforth be conducted through the duke’s capable deputy, Gerbier.
The infanta was pleased with Rubens’s overtures to Buckingham. Upon his return to Flanders she specifically commanded the painter to “maintain this friendship with the duke.” But reaching out to Buckingham was not Rubens’s only covert accomplishment during his time in Paris. Through the diplomatic rumor mill, he had learned that one of his most devoted clients, Wolfgang Wilhelm, the Duke of Neuburg, was on his way to that city from Madrid, and that his arrival posed a significant threat to the ongoing negotiations between Spain and the Dutch, the very negotiations that Rubens had been a party to through his cousin Jan Brant.
Neuburg, a knight of the Golden Fleece and a Spanish client, was in fact the unknowing pawn in an intricate and seemingly implausible conspiracy plot, an affair contrived by a notorious French aristocrat who hoped to promote his own status at the Parisian court at Spanish expense. To accomplish this coup, he had informed a known Spanish agent that France was anxious to serve as a mediator between Spain and the Dutch, and would do all in its power to end the war between them. This, of course, was patently false. France had no interest in mediating peace between Spain and the Dutch. As Rubens would inform the infanta, the French abhorred the idea of that peace “more than anything on earth.” For Cardinal Richelieu, the French chief minister, keeping Spain terminally engaged in conflict was an essential principle of foreign policy, a fact amply demonstrated with the signing of the Treaty of Compiègne, in June 1624, by which France pledged financial support to the Dutch cause.
Neuburg, then, was walking into a trap, having been dispatched as an emissary from Madrid on the basis of false information. Upon his arrival in Paris, the revelation of France’s true intentions would provoke a political firestorm and undermine what progress had already been made with the Dutch through the secret negotiations in which Rubens had long been engaged. Indeed, the Prince of Orange had specifically warned Rubens—through Jan Brant—that even letting word of their negotiations reach French ears would bring an end to all talks.
Rubens reported all of this back to Isabella in a dispatch sent by urgent courier on March 15, 1625. “I hope Your Highness will not take offense if I express my opinion according to my capacity, and with accustomed freedom,” he wrote. He proceeded to adumbrate, with absolute precision, just how pointless it would be to draw France into the matter:
The proposition of the duke of Neuburg, then, will only serve to disclose our secrets and to warn our French enemies in time to oppose our plans with greater certainty and violence, to frustrate them with all their power; it will completely disgust the Prince of Orange and result in breaking all other negotiations which are already so advanced, as Your Highness knows. I do not see how the French can in any way remove the obstacle which alone prevents the success of our enterprise, since they are supporting the opposing party with as much persistence as if the failure concerned their own interests … It is foolish to believe either the French desire this, or that they can find suitable means for the cessation of hostilities any more easily than we can do ourselves, if we wish. Finally, we need neither their favor, as Your Highness knows, nor the mediation of the duke; nor is it necessary to buy from the French what we can have for nothing.
Rubens proposed that Isabella order Neuburg to bypass Paris on his travels, if at all possible, and in any case allow him to make no proposals without her explicit consent. If it was too late to divert Neuburg, Rubens wanted permission to keep the duke “from putting a finger in the pie.” Should Madrid still deem it necessary to make an overture to the French, he suggested it come from a neutral intermediary, ideally a representative of the Vatican, rather than from Neuburg, who was in the pocket of Spain and therefore inherently suspect. Moreover, the duke was known to be a vainglorious gossip and could not be trusted to keep the matter quiet. Rubens closed with a request that his letter be “thrown into the fire.” The duke made for a lousy diplomat but a good patron, and he did not wish to “arouse his animosity.” Still, he concluded, “the public welfare and the service of Your Highness move me more strongly than any other passion.”
Isabella took Rubens’s message to heart. Through his timely intervention, Neuburg was sidelined, and Rubens was able to resume negotiations with Brant where they had left off. Facts on the ground, however, had shifted. With Spinola’s putative victory at Breda, in May 1625, the Spanish had strengthened their negotiating hand. But finding a party to negotiate with, now that Maurice was dead, presented a problem. Frederick Henry, the new Prince of Orange, did not command the Dutch political apparatus with the authority of his late brother. Instead, matters would have to be settled with the full States General—the fractious assembly of delegates from the seven members of the United Provinces—an onerous task.
Rubens left it to Brant to deal with that hydra, while offering him the consoling reassurance that the Spanish were not going to ramp up their demands. “It is up to you, on your side, to supply what is wanting,” he wrote to Brant a month after his return from Paris. “Our position, by God’s grace, is safe and secure, and it seems to me that the moderation shown on our side is by no means slight. For after so great a change, and with so considerable an advantage, we are keeping the same terms, without revising them in a single point … It now remains for you to make every effort to bring the desired answer as soon as possible, endorsed by the advice and orders of those who can maintain and carry it out; then it will be accepted at once by our side and put into effect.”
The letter was written in Italian, but Rubens and Brant had taken the measure of creating a secret numerical code to protect the identity of the pers
ons and places named: Isabella was 3; Maurice, 11; Neuburg, 24; Spinola, 26. Such ciphers were typical of diplomatic correspondence of the period, but the essential transparency of the “Rubens code” suggests its intended purpose was as much to placate Brant’s neurotic mind as to disguise state secrets. As it was, Rubens made a special point to inform Brant that Balthasar Gerbier (14), Buckingham’s political agent, had recently visited the artist at his Antwerp home with a proposal to establish England as an intermediary between Spain and the Dutch, and that through Rubens’s deception Gerbier remained ignorant of their direct negotiation. Gerbier was ostensibly in Antwerp to look over Rubens’s collection of antiquities on behalf of the duke.
For Rubens, the offer to negotiate through England wasn’t much more appealing than Neuburg’s doomed plan to go through France, and he was anxious to set aside Brant’s fears of being either exposed or sidelined in the future. “I believe he will probably be somewhat angry with me,” Rubens said of Gerbier, “but the way he pointed out is too long and does not correspond with our plans.” He advised his cousin that “as a good patriot,” it was now the time “to offer every service to the general welfare, for which we have worked so hard that I hope, with God’s help, our efforts will not be in vain.”
Unfortunately, not even God could help Brant secure a willing partner in the States General, or at least one deemed acceptable to Isabella. “I have once more spoken urgently with 3 [Isabella] and 26 [Spinola] in favor of your proposition,” Rubens wrote to Brant in August, using their code. “According to what 26 writes me, it was not received favorably by 3.” Meanwhile, the situation on the ground—or more accurately, at sea—made peace seem an illusory goal. In the late summer, Isabella shifted her court to the port of Dunkirk, where she and Spinola could manage the construction of a fleet to combat the Dutch navy.