Rubens’s encounter with natural philosophy and the ‘occult sciences’ in 17th century Italy (original) (raw)
Teresa Esposito
Rubens’s Encounter with Natural Philosophy and the “Occult Sciences” in 17th 17^{\text {th }}-century Italy
Although Rubens’s erudition and speculative ability have been largely acknowledged by his contemporaries as well as his first biographers, only a limited number of publications on selected aspects of Rubens’s mind have been published. 1{ }^{1} Most of the existing literature on the artist has focused on the Rubens’s reception of the antique and Renaissance painting, on studio practices (mainly on copying and attribution), on his painting technique and on the artist as a collector. While this line of research has been - and still is - highly valuable for the general reconstruction of his oeuvre, the scant quantity of scholarly contributions on Rubens’s intellectual output represents a lack in the scholarship on the artist. Furthermore, these contributions have concentrated on specific areas of Rubens’s encyclopedic mind, without harmonizing them with the rest of his thinking. They did not rely on a solid scholarly tradition, since interest in this field has started only in the beginning of our century, as a consequence of a renewed interest in the artist’s Theoretical notebook. The latter consists in a booklet or, in Michael Jaffé’s words, a «vade mecum» in which the Flemish master registered and developed art theoretical insights based on hermetic and esoteric traditions. 2{ }^{2}
- M. Jaffé, Rubens and Optics: Some Fresh Evidence, in «Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes», 44 (1971), pp. 362-366; J.M. Muller, Rubens’ Theory and Practice of the Imitation of Art, in «The Art Bulletin», 64 (1982), pp. 229-247; Rubens Passioni. Kultur der Leidenschaften im Barock, ed. by U. Heinen and A. Thielemann, Göttingen 2001; E. Juntunen, Peter Paul Rubens’ bildimplizite Kunsttheorie in Ausgewählten mythologischen Historien (1611-1618), Petersberg 2005; D. Jaffé, A. Bradley, Rubens’s ‘Pocketbook’: An Introduction to the Creative Process, in Rubens. A Master in the Making, exhibition catalogue (London, National Gallery, 2005-2006), ed. by D. Jaffé et al., London 2005, pp. 21-27; T. Meganck, Rubens on the Human Figure: Theory, Practice and Metaphysics, in Rubens: A Genius at Work. The Works of Peter Paul Rubens in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium Reconsidered, ed. by J. Vander Auwera et al., Brussels 2007, pp. 52-64; A. Thielemann, Rubens’ Traktat De imitatione statuarum, in Imitatio als Transformation: Theorie und Praxis der Antikennachahmung in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. by P. Seiler et al., Petersberg 2012, pp. 95-146 [translated into English and reprinted in Rubens and the Human Body, ed. by C. van Wyhe, Turnhout 2018, pp. 41-101].
- For recent discussions of Rubens’s notebook, see A. Balis, Rubens und Inventio. Der Beitrag seines theoretischen Studienbuches, in Rubens Passioni, pp. 11-40; P.P. Rubens, Théorie de la figure humaine, ed. by N. Laneyrie-Dagen, Paris 2003; Jaffé, Bradley, Rubens’s ‘Pocketbook’, pp. 21-27; Meganck, Rubens on the Human Figure, pp. 52-64; D. Jaffé, Rubens’s lost ‘Pocketbook’: some new thoughts, in «Burlington Magazine», 152/1283 (2010), pp. 94-98; B. Van Beneden, Ru-
Although the original manuscript has been severely damaged by fire when in the possession of Charles Boulle (1720), parts of Rubens’s autograph version are luckily preserved in four transcripts originated during the 17th 17^{\text {th }} century. 3 A{ }^{3} \mathrm{~A} comparison of these surviving copies, and a careful analysis of the few sheets that still remain, makes it possible to get a grip on his thoughts. These documents show us traces of Rubens’s lost sketchbook of learning and observation, containing notes on anatomy, optics, symmetry, and a study of the human passions, all within the Hermetic-Neoplatonic framework peculiar to his time. They provide some precious clues about how Rubens ambitiously tied theory to practice, making of them essential records in our understanding of Rubens’s mind.
The first question one should ask at this point is why did Rubens scholars take so long to engage in the artist’s theoretical studies? It is generally assumed that Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer, for instance, provided illustrious precedents for Rubens’s theoretical approach to the study of nature. 4{ }^{4} Clues to Rubens’s fascination with Leonardo are given by his main biographer, the French art critic Roger de Piles (1635-1709). The latter, since 1699 in possession of Rubens’s original notebook, 5{ }^{5} quoted several passages from it wherein Rubens recorded Leonardo’s visual sources including more theoretical issues. 6{ }^{6} De Piles’s testimony clearly shows how Leonardo’s notes and drawings on anatomy and physiognomy made their mark on the young Rubens (1603). 7{ }^{7} The same could be said for his stereometric study of the Farnese Hercules (Pl. XXI), wherein it is evident that Rubens was looking at Albrecht Dürer’s work as well as that of other German artists. While a number of scholars have dedicated a great deal of
bens Maverick Artist: The Master’s Theoretical Notebook, Antwerp 2013; A. Balis, The Theoretical Notebook, forthcoming; T. Esposito, Peter Paul Rubens. A Student of Natural Philosophy and Modern Science, forthcoming.
3. Two of those copies, the Ms. Chatsworth (Chatsworth, The Devonshire Collection), and the Ms. Bordes (Madrid, Biblioteca Museo Nacional del Prado), originated during Rubens’s lifetime. The Ms. Chatsworth, for instance, was published by Michael Jaffé as an early work by Anthony Van Dyck in 1966, while the Ms. Bordes seems to have been copied directly from Rubens’s lost original notebook. The other two manuscripts - the Ms. Johnson (London, Courtauld Institute Galleries) and the Ms. De Ganay (formerly Paris, Marquis Jean-Louis de Ganay; on permanent loan to the Rubens House, Antwerp), both of the second half of the 17th 17^{\text {th }} century - are presumably based on the Ms. Bordes. The Ms. De Ganay was published in the 18th 18^{\text {th }} century in a French translation by Charles-Antoine Jombert, with the title Théorie de la figure humaine, considérée dans ses principes, soit en repos ou en mouvement, Paris 1773.
4. M. Jaffé, Rubens and Italy, Oxford 1977, p. 31; J. Barone, Rubens and Leonardo on motion: figures, inscriptions and texts, in Re-reading Leonardo. The Treatise on Painting across Europe, 1550.1900, ed. by C. Farago, Ashgate 2009, pp. 441-472.
5. Balis, Rubens und Inventio, p. 15.
6. R. de Piles, Abrégé de la vie des peintres, Paris 1699, p. 168: «Rubens s’étend ensuite sur le degré auquel Leonard de Vinci possédoit l’Anatomie. Il rapporte en détail toutes les Etudes & tous les Desseins que Leonard avoit faits, & que Rubens avoit vûs parmi les curiositez d’un nommé Pompée Leoni, qui étoit d’Arezzo. Il continê par l’Anatomie des Chevaux, & par les Observations que Leonard avoit faires sur le Phisionomie, don’t Rubens avoit vû pareillement des Desseins; & il finit par la méthode dont ce Peintre mesuroit le corps humain».
7. M. Kwakkelstein, Anatomical Studies, forthcoming.
attention to Leonardo’s obsession with nature as a source of artistic and technical inspiration, this is not the case for Rubens. What is the reason for these lacunae? The answer to this question can be traced back to the late 19th 19^{\text {th }} century, when some notable Rubens experts adopted a skeptical attitude towards the artist’s interests in physiognomy, Paracelsian alchemy, Christian cabala and hermeticism. 8{ }^{8} More specifically, his notes on the occult were difficult to reconcile with Rubens’s commitment to Catholic faith. Therefore, scholars like Max Rooses (1839-1914) and Ludwig Burchard (1886-1960) considered the Theoretical notebook to be entirely apocryphal. To them it seemed impossible to see the Baroque genius Rubens, generally considered the most prolific and brilliant propagandist for Catholic Habsburg power, as a practitioner of foolishness and superstition. Since the early modern period alchemists and natural magicians had been dismissed as enemies of the Christian faith, and therefore persecuted, arrested, and in some cases brutally executed. Traces of this misconception are still persistent in the 18th 18^{\text {th }} century when the French art lover Charles-Antoine Jombert (1712-1784) published a printed edition of Rubens’s notebook. Jombert’s book, Théorie de la figure humaine, considérée dans ses principes, soit en repos ou en mouvement, saw the light in 1773 in Paris and was largely based on one of the surviving transcripts, the Ms. De Ganay. Jombert did not translate all texts contained in the original manuscript; on the contrary, he expressly omitted illustrations and those passages which dealt with natural philosophy, alchemy and cabala. In his introduction, he explained the reasons of his decision to suppress some fragments from Rubens’s writings:
[…] I have only removed two chapters on cabalistic principles; one on the properties of the numbers applied to the operations of alchemy; the other on the primitive creation of the first man, who was an hermaphrodite, then divided into two sexes; on the marriage of the sun with the moon, and other fancies drawn from hermetic philosophy, which seemed to me useless and absurd. 9{ }^{9}
In line with the Enlightenment concepts of his age, which opposed “occult sciences” in distinction from official and experimental science (chemistry; physics; astronomy), Jombert criticized Rubens’s interest in alchemy and cabala, defining those disciplines as «useless and absurd», not worthy of consideration. At this point, one could ask to what extent Jombert’s ideas affected later scholarship. It seems to me quite obvious that similar opinions persisted among Rubens experts in the following century. Indeed, 19th 19^{\text {th }} century positivist historiography and occultist
- Esposito, Peter Paul Rubens. A Student of Natural Philosophy.
- P.P. Rubens, Théorie de la figure humaine, considérée dans ses principes, soit en repos ou en mouvement, ed. by Ch.-A. Jombert, Paris 1773, p. 6: «[…] J’en ai seulement retranché deux chapitres de principes cabalistiques; l’un sur le propriétés des nombres appliqués aux opérations de la chymie; l’autre sur la formation primitive de l’homme créé d’abord hermaphrodite, puis divisé en deux sexes; sur le marriage du soleil avec la lune, & autres rêveries tirées de la philosophie hermetique, qui m’ont paru inintelligibles & sans fuite, & qui sont d’ailleurs aussi étrangeres au sujet principal, qu’inutiles & absurdes».
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ideologies popularised by Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) and his school denied any scientific status to alchemy and other related pursuits. By committing the anachronism of projecting modern notions onto prior periods, 19th 19^{\text {th }} century scholars claimed that alchemy was concerned with the “spiritual” and the “irrational”. 10{ }^{10} How could they possibly associate the established image of the “Catholic” and ingenious Rubens with that of a painter, who is also a practitioner of all sorts of diabolic arts? In sharp contrast to 19th 19^{\text {th }} century ideologies, which used to consider the “occult sciences” as superstitious counterparts to reason and experimentation, historians of science Anthony Grafton, William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe are strenuously fighting for the recognition of their pivotal role in the history of early modern science. 11{ }^{11} In Baroque society many intellectuals and highly ranked individuals belonging to various confessions practiced alchemical operations or lived and operated at the borders of orthodoxy; among them Rubens’s most important mentors Otto van Veen and Justus Lipsius, but also Sir Kenelm Digby, who had been a close friend of Anthony Van Dyck. Alchemical experiments and natural magic were highly valued and actively practiced by elitist groups within European court societies. Princely and royal courts became catalysts of non-Aristotelian philosophies of nature, where the nobility and their entourage developed an increasing interest in natural and technological marvels, esoteric traditions, alchemical and astrological knowledge. 12{ }^{12} Looking back at the patronage structures that underpinned Rubens’s life and career in 17th 17^{\text {th }}-century Antwerp and Italy seems to be a necessary corrective to a historiography that has insulated the artist’s notes on the occult from his thinking. It can be stressed here that Rubens’s political and social status as a courtier and his connections with learned circles throughout Europe were at the heart of his encounters with that cluster of disciplines and practices comprising natural philosophy, astronomy and optics, but also the so-called “occult sciences”. After a brief account of Rubens’s early education in Antwerp, I will turn my attention to the Italian years (16001608), when the young Rubens brought his esoteric investigations into nature and the human body full circle. Otto van Veen, the humanist and official court painter to the archdukes in Antwerp, might have been among the first to plant the seeds of alchemical knowledge in his young apprentice when the latter entered his studio in 1595. Rubens’s training in Van Veen’s workshop is not only relevant for the acquisition of the practical aspects of an artist’s profession, but also for its somehow overlooked speculative implications. In fact, as a boy Van Veen entered the service of the Prince-bishop Ernest of Bavaria (1554-1612) in Liège, where he became acquainted with the writings of the Swiss physician Paracelsus, well-
- W. Hanegraaff, The Notion of “Occult Sciences” in the Wake of the Enlightenment, in Aufklärung und Esoterik: Wege in die Moderne, ed. by M. Neugebauer-Wölk, R. Geffarth and M. Meumann, Berlin 2013, pp. 73-74.
- See, for instance, W. Newman, L. Principe, Alchemy vs. Chemistry: The Etymological Origins of a Historiographic Mistake, in «Early Science and Medicine», 3 (1998), pp. 32-65.
- M. Biagioli, Galileo Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism, Chicago 1993.
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known as the radical reformer of traditional medicine. 13{ }^{13} One surviving document, entitled Physicae et theologicae conclusiones, published anonymously in 1621, attests to Van Veen’s interest in Paracelsianism. 14{ }^{14} For its controversial content, Van Veen was placed on trial and condemned by theologians of Leuven around 1627-1630. 15{ }^{15} The scant quantity of textual evidence - besides this publication and the fact that even Rubens expressed the desire to read his master’s short treatise «senza parlarne con huomo vivente se così è necessario» 16{ }^{16} in a 1622 letter to Van Veen’s brother, Pieter, attests to a certain secrecy and dissimulation among erudite circles around the matter of Paracelsianism. This seems to be a widespread phenomenon, which also reaches the dogmatically ambiguous Justus Lipsius. Besides being the restorer of Neostoicism, Lipsius was also the other influential man in Rubens’s early life. The impact that his ideas on Stoic ethics have had on Rubens’s artistic production and persona have indeed been largely acknowledged by art historians; less known is that for this philosopher the study of nature - hence natural philosophy - constituted a pre-requisite for carrying out any serious investigation in the field of ethics. Lipsius addressed and developed his most interesting observations pertaining to nature, God and the human soul in his treatise, the Physiologia Stoicorum (Antwerp, 1604). 17{ }^{17} This book represents a valuable document for our understanding of Rubens’s theoretical output, for its eclectic method, consisting in combining and harmonizing different ancient esoteric sources, and for the subjects discussed.
Until the year of his death in 1606 - by that time Rubens had already lived for nearly seven years on the Italian peninsula - Lipsius’s authority and
13. R. Halleux, A.C. Bernès, La cour savante d’Ernest de Bavière, in «Archives internationales d’histoire des sciences», 45 (1995), pp. 21-22.
14. O. Van Veen, Physicae et theologicae conclusiones, notis et figuris dispositae ac demonstratae, de primariis fidei capitibus, atque inprimis de praedestinatione, quomodo effectus illius superetur a libero arbitrio, Orsellis [sic] 1621; Otto Van Veen. Physicae et Theologicae Conclusiones / Conclusions de Physique et de Théologie (1621), ed. and trans. by R. Dekoninck, A. Guiderdoni and A. Smeesters, Turnhout 2017.
15. C. Broeckx, Notice sur le manuscrit Causa J.B. Helmontii déposé aux Archives Archiépiscopales de Malines, in «Annales de l’Académie d’Archéologie de Belgique», 9 (1852), p. 303: «Nous estimons que tous deux, Venius et Van Helmont instruits dans l’école de Paracelse, c’est-àdire du diable, ont été installés par leur maître dans la même chaire de pestilence, et, chacun dans son art, l’un en peignant ou en dessinant, l’autre en philosophant par le feu, répandent dans le monde entier ces ténèbres plus que Cimmériennes dont l’esprit de chacun de deux est profondément recouvert, et agité selon la volonté du démon».
16. Rubens to Pieter van Veen, 19 June 1622: «Intendo chel Sig’ Ottavio Veen suo Fratello ha messo in stampa un operetta Anonima della Teoria universale o simil cosa, il quale io desidererei summamente di vedere et se V S. fosse servita di communicarmelà dovendo lei senza dubbio haver un essemplare io lhaverei sum te { }^{\text {te }} caro et l’accettarei sotto parolla di huomo da bene di tenere questo suo favore secretissimo senza parlarne con huomo vivente se così è necessario». Quoted in Correspondance de Rubens et documents épistolaires concernant sa vie et ses oeuvres, ed. by M. Rooses and Ch. Ruelens, 6 vols., Antwerp 1887-1909 (Codex Diplomaticus Rubenianus), II, pp. 444-445, no. CCLXVI.
17. J. Lipsius, Physiologiae Stoicorum libri tres: L. Annaeo Senecae, aliisque scriptoribus illustrandis, Antwerp 1604.
teachings exerted a considerable impact on his pupil’s mindset and education as a practical man, who also cherished the heritage of the ancients. During his journey throughout Italy, the ambitious artist crossed paths with many learned friends; some of them were active members of the first scientific societies devoted to the investigation and transmission of the secrets of nature. Rubens’s closeness with this suitable environment, where anti-Aristotelianism, empiricism and intellectual freedom dominated the scene, provided the young painter with a fertile ground for developing certain topics in his notebook. All this was made possible by means of political protection and ecclesiastical patronage.
Rubens was among the fortunate northern artists to undertake the Italian journey in order to complete his humanist education. Part of his early success was facilitated by the social position occupied by some members of his family. Rubens’s older brother Philip, for instance, was appointed secretary to Cardinal Ascanio Colonna in Rome, after completing his studies with Lipsius in Leuven. The latter used to supply his most promising pupils (contubernales) with letters of recommendation (testimonia) in order to favour their appointment within the socio-political system of Italian courts. 18{ }^{18} By 1600, there were a number of contubernales in Venice, Padua, Milan and Rome, who followed Neostoicism, influencing the thought of prominent intellectuals (Galileo, Sarpi, Faber and Cesi). 19{ }^{19} Many of them were converts and thus more suitable to satisfy the strategic patronage of powerful Catholic cardinals (Colonna, Cesi, Baronio, Madruzzo etc.). 20{ }^{20} The northern-born Rubens brothers were both Lipsius’s students and came from a family of Catholic converts (I will remind here that Lipsius himself converted to Catholicism). Their presence on the Italian peninsula should also be related to Lipsius’s agenda of promoting Stoicism, by Christianizing ancient pagan philosophers. Before Lipsius’s intervention, Stoic doctrine was regarded as incompatible with Christianity and some of his works had even undergone rigorous investigation by the censors. 21{ }^{21} After his conversion, Lipsius’s desire was to ensure that his work was in conformity with the Catholic faith, and that it would be acknowledged as such by the Inquisition. Among his favourite pupils, the Rubens brothers carried out the task of rehabilitating his new image of Catholic scholar; we should understand the significant gesture of Philip Rubens delivering Lipsius’s edition of Seneca to Pope Paul V (1605), or Philip’s engagement in antiquarian studies, in this light. In fact, the attitude towards the classics - shared by Peter Paul - was another manifestation of Lipsius’s larger program of blending
18. M. Morford, Lipsius’s Letters of Recommendation, in Self-presentation and Social Identification. The Rhetoric and Pragmatics of Letter Writing in Early Modern Times, ed. by T. Van Houdt, Leuven 2002, pp. 183-198.
19. Esposito, Peter Paul Rubens. A Student of Natural Philosophy.
20. F. Huemer, Rubens and the Roman Circle: Studies of the First Decade, New York-London 1996 (Garland Studies in the Renaissance), p. 50, n. 26; R.S. Noyes, Peter Paul Rubens and the Counter-Reformation Crisis of the Beati moderni, New York 2017 (Sanctity in Global Perspective), p. 228 .
21. Lipsius’s Politica of 1589 had been placed on the Roman Index.
ancient philosophies with Christianity. On the other hand, the Lipsian message reached also the advocates of the newly born scientific academies. For instance, Federico Cesi, the nephew of Cardinal Bartolomeo Cesi and founder of the Accademia dei Lincei, wrote that he had studied Lipsian Neostoicism and that he possessed some of the philosopher’s works in his library, 22{ }^{22} the same can be said for Johannes Faber, the German physician and intimate friend of Rubens, who became a member of the Roman Accademia (1611) and held an influent position inside the Curia.
During his three years in Rome (from the summer of 1601 until the spring of 1602; again, between the end of 1605 and spring of 1607), Rubens actively participated in the cultural activities promoted by the Linceans. Between the end of 1605 and spring of 1607 , the artist - then living with his brother Philip in the rione Campo Marzio - became acquainted with Cardinal Bartolomeo Cesi. Rubens may have been introduced to the Cesi family by the German convert Kaspar Schoppe, who knew the cardinal personally, or Jan Hemelaers, a former student of Lipsius who was working as a secretary and librarian to Cardinal Cesi. 23{ }^{23} The Rubens brothers regularly visited Cesi’s household, as confirmed by copies made by Peter Paul after ancient statues in the garden of the Roman prelate, including the Roma Victrix and the marble group of the Crouching Woman with a Boy with a goose (originally representing Leda and the swan). 24{ }^{24} Here the Rubens brothers also met Antonio Persio (1542-1612), 25{ }^{25} a natural philosopher and follower of Bernardino Telesio (1509-1588), whose work had been severely condemned by the Roman censors (in the 1596 Index) for its critique of Aristotelianism and for its dangerous assertions on the nature of the human soul. 26{ }^{26} A priest from Matera, Persio is renowned for having edited Telesio’s works (Varii de naturalibus rebus libelli, 1590) and disseminating his ideas. In the 1570 s he became also friend with Francesco Patrizi (1529-1597), who had been responsible for the revival of Hermetic and Platonic philosophy at the end of the 16th 16^{\text {th }} century in Rome, 27{ }^{27} and
22. L’Accademia dei Lincei e la cultura europea nel XVII secolo, ed. by A.M. Capecchia et al., Rome 1992, p. 145, no. 31.
23. In 1600 Jan de Hemelaer (1580-1655) entered the service of Cardinal Cesi in Rome, armed with a testimonium by Lipsius. G. Gabrieli, Ricordi Romani di P.P. Rubens, in «Bollettino d’arte», 12 (1928), p. 608.
24. M. Van der Meulen, Petrus Paulus Rubens Antiquarius Collector and Copyst of Antique Gems, Utrecht 1975, p. 80, n. 31. For the marble group see M. De Angelis d’Ossat, Palazzo Altemps. Le collezioni, Milan 2018, pp. 208-209, inv. nos. 8565 and 8565 bis. Rubens, Théorie de la figure humaine, p. 47: «L’enfant que l’on voit à côté de la statue de Léda, qui joue avec un cygne».
25. From 1590 until his death in 1612 Persio lived in Rome, where he also met Tommaso Campanella and Galileo Galilei; see G. Gabrieli, Notizia della vita e degli scritti di Antonio Persio Linceo, in «Rendiconti della Reale Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei», 9 (1933), pp. 471-499.
26. Telesio’s books De rerum natura and Telesij opera were publicly burned in Naples, cf. P. Lopez, Inquisizione, stampa e censura nel Regno di Napoli tra '500 e '600, Naples 1974, pp. 216-217.
27. M. Mulsow, Philosophia Italica als reduzierte prisca-sapientia-Ideologie: Antonio Persio und Francesco Patrizis Rekonstruktion der Elementenlehre, in Das Ende des Hermetismus: Hi-
with the Calabrian friar Tommaso Campanella. Philip Rubens wrote a poem in honour of Persio, which celebrated the latter’s treatise Del bever caldo costumato dagli antichi Romani (Venice, 1593). 28{ }^{28} In this work, Persio aimed to establish whether the ancient Romans used to mix wine with hot or cold water, a relevant medical issue. 29{ }^{29} In fact, supporting the idea of the ancients’ use of hot water meant for Persio to advocate the Telesian principle of spiritus, a generative, vital heat, with which man is endowed and which - on the basis of its intrinsic quality of heat - needs to assume elements with similar qualities in order to secure man’s preservation. Persio’s discourse has to be placed in a broader medical context of opposition to the more traditional humoral theory developed by Hippocrates. These ideas were applauded by Lipsius in a letter addressed to Persio in 1603. 30{ }^{30} The two thinkers had already met ten years before; in fact, Telesio’s follower mentions having read a certain: «osservatione del bever caldo de gli antichi fatta da un Fiamengo huomo dell’età nostra molto dotto delle cose antiche». 31{ }^{31} In this case, Persio is very likely referring to Lipsius who, in his commentary on Tacitus’s Annals, had stated that the ancient Romans used to drink hot water. 32{ }^{32} More importantly, Lipsius will develop similar theories concerning the notion of spiritus in his Physiologia Stoicorum in about the same years (1604). In fact, like Telesio and his faithful disciple Persio, he had sustained the existence of a universal and sympathetic spiritus, inhabiting all living creatures, man and animals. Contrary to Telesio’s teachings, Lipsius had prudently rejected the corporeal nature of the all-embracing spirit for its incompatibility with Christian doctrine. At this point it seems appropriate to mention Rubens’s physiognomical studies, in which he developed comparative analyses between the features and proportions of strong men and those of certain animals (nothomie) - such as the lion, the bull and the horse - believed to share with humans the same cognitive and emotional apparatus. 33{ }^{33} Irene Baldriga had already noted the parallels between
storische Kritik und neue Naturphilosophie in der Spätrenaissance, ed. by M. Mulsow, Tübingen 2002, pp. 253-280.
28. Ph. Rubens, S. Asterii Episcopi Amaseae Homiliae Graece et Latine nunc primum editae Philippo Rubenio interprete, Antwerp 1615, p. 111.
29. In this medical treatise Persio incorporated many ideas already present in his Trattato dell’ingegno dell’huomo (1576) about the spirit and its preservation. See also L. Carotti, Persio, Antonio, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 82, Rome 2015, ad vocem.
30. J. Lipsius, Epistolarum selectarum centuria quinta, in J. Lipsius, Opera omnia, 2 vols., Antwerp, 1637, II, letter XXXVI to Persio dated 3 November 1603.
31. A. Persio, Del bever caldo costumato dagli antichi Romani, Venice 1593, proem.
32. Ad Annales Corn. Taciti liber commentarius, sive notae, ed. by J. Lipsius, in J. Lipsius, Opera omnia quae exstant, Antwerp 1581, XIII, p. 372: «Innoxia adhuc & praecalida potio. Rettuli ad Calidae potionem in Electis. & velim ei capiti addi Arriani locum lib. I. cap. XIII».
33. After Rubens, Ms. De Ganay, fol. 32: «Hercules atlethae et quidquid supramodum in robore est, ex tauro, leone (et si quid etiam addi potest equo). sed ita digesta ac temperata ut discerni nequeant». I will present a paper, Ricerche fisiognomiche nei manoscritti di Leonardo e Rubens e nella Physiognomonia di Della Porta, at the upcoming conference La rappresentazione delle emozioni dalla Humana Physiognomonia di G.B. Della Porta ad oggi: semiotica, letteratura, arti e psicologia (Vico Equense, 2020).
Rubens’s drawings and the interest in comparative physiognomy held by his German friend Faber and the Lincean circle in Rome. Well-documented is also their close relationship to the treatise De humana Physiognomonia (Naples, 1586), by Giovan Battista Della Porta, who will join the Roman Accademia dei Lincei in 1610.341610 .{ }^{34} I propose that Rubens’s theoretical investigations reflect certain discussions pertaining to the nature of the human soul and the notion of cosmic spirit, which were developed by a group of scholars in opposition to the established Aristotelian tradition advocated by the Church.
Another case of dissent with the canonical authorities concerns the matter of Paracelsianism, a theme that Rubens also addressed in his notebook. The interest of the members of the Accademia dei Lincei in the spagyric art has been studied in depth in the last decades, 35{ }^{35} and it seems thus logical to link Rubens’s notes on alchemy with the experiments carried out by the Linceans. Books and manuscripts by the Swiss alchemist, or connected to his teachings, circulated in Cesi’s institution since its foundation (1603). Rubens would have become acquainted with this knowledge through Faber, who was a physician himself, and was strongly interested in the works of the eccentric doctor. Faber possessed the entire oeuvre of Paracelsus, as well as the writings of his northern followers. 36{ }^{36} For its controversial character and association with Protestantism, Paracelsus’s work had been included in several indices of forbidden books (e.g. 1596). In 1616 the Congregation for the Index asked the German-speaking Faber to investigate the works of the medical reformer, and it is not surprising to see Rubens’s friend expressing a moderate judgement with respect to it. 37{ }^{37}
It has been long demonstrated that Paracelsianism denied the Aristotelian distinction between the sublunar and celestial realms and supported the recent astronomical and cosmological discoveries. 38{ }^{38} The Paracelsian notion of material unity in the natural world was highly complementary to Lipsius’s views on the existence of a sympathetic spiritus, filling the whole universe. This should not surprise us since Lipsius had been introduced to the world of alchemy around 1570s, when he was appointed secretary to Cardinal Granvelle. 39{ }^{39} In any case, at the beginning of the 17th 17^{\text {th }} century the Lincean circle in Rome established contacts
34. I. Baldriga, L’occhio della lince. I primi Lincei tra arte, scienza e collezionismo (16031630), Rome 2002, pp. 99-102.
35. A. Clericuzio, S. De Renzi, Medicine, alchemy and natural philosophy in the early Accademia dei Lincei, in Italian Academies of the Sixteenth Century, ed. by D.S. Chambers and F. Quiviger, London 1995, pp. 175-195.
36. G. Miggiano, Fra politica e scienza: la biblioteca di Johannes Faber Linceo, in Le biblioteche private come paradigma bibliografico, proceedings of the conference (Rome, 10th −12th 10^{\text {th }}-12^{\text {th }} October 2007), ed. by F. Sabba, Rome 2008, pp. 148-150.
37. L. Spruit, L. De Vries, Paracelsus and Roman censorship. Johannes Faber’s 1616 report in context, in «Intellectual History Review» (2017), pp. 1-30.
38. W. Pagel, Paracelso: un’introduzione alla medicina filosofica nell’età del Rinascimento, It. trans., Milan 1989, pp. 76 ff.
39. S. Matton, Alchimie et stoïcisme: à propos de récentes recherches, in «Chrysopoeia», 5 (1992-1996), p. 123.
with the most illustrious scholars in order to acquire alchemical books and satisfy their common thirst for the secrets of nature. For instance, the exchanges between Cesi’s Accademia and don Antonio de’ Medici (1576-1621) in Florence are welldocumented. 40{ }^{40} Don Antonio - the illegitimate son of Francesco I de’ Medici and Bianca Cappello - was also a great experimenter and patron of several alchemists and artisans (Fig. 1). He set up an alchemical laboratory (fonderia) at the Casino di San Marco and compiled a number of alchemical recipes in a book containing tutta l’arte spargirica di Teofrasto, Paracelso, et sue medicine, et altri segreti bellissimi (Florence, 1604). 41{ }^{41} Besides being one of the most accomplished Paracelsian devotees, don Antonio was the half-brother of Maria de’ Medici, the future Queen of France. We know that Rubens attended the grand ducal wedding of Maria de’ Medici and Henry IV of France in Florence on 5 October 1600 as a member of the retinue of the Duke of Mantua Vincenzo Gonzaga (who was the husband of the bride’s elder sister Eleonora). 42{ }^{42} More than twenty years later (1622-1625) Rubens was commissioned the famous cycle of paintings dedicated to the life of the queen, destined to decorate the Luxembourg Palace in Paris. 43{ }^{43} Among the twenty-four pictures of the whole cycle, The Disembarkation of Maria de’Medici at Marseilles represents the ceremonial arrival of the queen in southern France, accompanied by her retinue, after her wedding in Florence (Fig. 2). On this occasion Maria de’ Medici’s half-brother don Antonio, in charge of five Maltese galleys, accompanied his sister from Livorno to Marseilles. 44{ }^{44} It has been recently proposed to identify the figure of the knight of Malta standing in the foreground with don Giovanni de’ Medici, who at that time was in charge of the Royal Galley. 45{ }^{45} This identification should be revised since don Antonio, and not don Giovanni, belonged to the order. Don Antonio had been forced by his uncle, the Grand Duke Ferdinando, to join the order of the Knights of Malta at a young age (1593). He is usually portraited with moustache, short beard, a pearl in his left ear and with the white cross of the Order of Jerusalem on his breast (Figs. 3, 4). 46{ }^{46} Probably on the request of the Queen
40. G. Gabrieli, Qualche altra notizia sugli scritti e la vita di Giovanni Ecchio, in «Rendiconti della Reale Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei», 10 (1934), pp. 479-507.
41. M. Lastri, L’Osservatore fiorentino sugli edifizi della sua patria, Florence 1831, I, p. 159, n. 103.
42. Correspondance, III, no. CCXCIII.
43. N. Büttner, The Medici Series, forthcoming.
44. F. Luti, Medici, Antonio de’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 73, Rome 2009, ad vocem.
45. A.J. Chrościcki, The Recovered Modello of P.P. Rubens’ Disembarkation at Marseilles. The Problem of Control and Censorship in the Cycle Life of Maria de’Medici, in «Artibus et Historiae», 51 (2005), pp. 242, 246. See R.F. Millen, R.E. Wolf, Heroic Deeds and Mystic Figures: A New Reading of Rubens’ Life of Maria de’ Medici, Princeton 1989, chapter VII, pp. 67-69 for a detailed discussion of the figure of the knight of the white cross. The authors exclude that Rubens may have shown either don Pedro Gonzáles de Mendoza (O. von Simson, Zur Genealogie der weltlichen Apotheose im Barock besonders der Medicigalerie des P. P. Rubens, Strassburg 1936, p. 306) or don Giovanni de’ Medici.
46. K. Langedijk, The Portraits of the Medici 15th −18th 15^{\text {th }}-18^{\text {th }} centuries, Florence 1981, I, pp. 301306; C. Caneva, Ritratto di Antonio de’ Medici, in Maria de’ Medici. Una principessa fiorentina
Mother and to commemorate her brother, who had died a year before Rubens had signed the contract for the Medici cycle (1622), Rubens portraited the effigy of don Antonio de’ Medici in the man standing on the Galley, looking at the queen during her triumphant arrival at Marseilles. It is a fascinating suggestion that Rubens might have painted don Antonio, a man who at that time was chiefly celebrated for his chemical skills and for having set up an important laboratory in Florence. Antonio’s fonderia, beautifully illustrated by Filippo Napoletano in 1619, had reached notoriety north of the Alps (Fig. 5). 47{ }^{47} For instance, in Antwerp the wealthy Portuguese merchant Emmanuel Ximenez (1564-1632), who was a lover of the alchemical arts and one of Rubens’s clients, exchanged his “secrets” with some of Antonio’s chemists and craftsmen working at the Casino di San Marco. 48{ }^{48} Ximenez had established the Distilleerkamer in the attic of his residence at the Meir, near Rubens’s house at the Wapper.
These few given examples illustrate, albeit only partially, the extent to which Rubens participated in an endeavor where physiognomy, alchemy and other related disciplines were not just highly valued, but even supported by the scientific patronage of princely and ecclesiastic courts. As a young man Rubens was fully immersed in this particular body of knowledge, and thus it should not surprise us to see him noting down in his notebook everything which his curious eyes might have experienced. This informal compilation of notes and sketches represents a microcosm mirroring a larger Baroque society, wherein occult disciplines played a fundamental role in the development of early modern science.
sul trono di Francia, exhibition catalogue (Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Museo degli Argenti, 2005), ed. by C. Caneva and F. Solinas, Livorno 2005, p. 173, no. II.12; S.M. Trkulja, Ritratto di Antonio de’ Medici, marchese di Capistrano, ibid., p. 69, no. I. 16.
47. V. Conticelli, Una storia di storie. La Fonderia del Granduca: laboratorio, wunderkammer e museo farmaceutico, in L’alchimia e le arti. La Fonderia degli Uffizi da laboratorio a stanza delle meraviglie, Livorno 2013, pp. 19-21; M. Beretta, Material and Temporal Powers at the Casino di San Marco (1574-1621), in Laboratories of Art, ed. by S. Dupré, Cham 2014, pp. 129-156.
48. M. Beretta, Glassmaking Goes Public: The Cultural Background to Antonio Neri’s L’Arte Vetraria (1612), in «Technology and Culture», 58 (2017), p. 1057. Ximenez practiced chiefly the branch of alchemy known as chemiatria, destined to the production of medicines. See L. Principe, The Laboratory, in Reading the Inventory: The Possessions of the Portuguese Merchant-Banker Emmanuel Ximenez (1564-1632) in Antwerp, ed. by S. Dupré and Ch. Göttler, http://ximenez.unibe. ch; The Worlds and Possessions of the Portuguese Merchant-Banker Emmanuel Ximenez in early seventeenth-century Antwerp, ed. by S. Dupré and Ch. Göttler, forthcoming.
Fig. 1. Theodor Crüger (Dietrich Krüger), Portrait of Don Antonio de’ Medici, 1618, Florence, Museo Galileo, Archivio Fotografico.
Fig. 2. Peter Paul Rubens, The Disembarkation of Maria de’ Medici at Marseilles, 1621-1625, Paris, Musée du Louvre (photo Grand Palais, Hervé Lewandowski).
Fig. 3. Unknown artist, Miniature Portrait of Don Antonio de’ Medici, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi.
Fig. 4. Unknown artist, Portrait of Don Antonio de’ Medici, 1600-1610, Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina e Appartamenti Reali, Poggio Imperiale.
Fig. 5. Teodoro Filippo di Liagno, known as Filippo Napoletano, The Atelier of the Alchemist, Florence, Palazzo Pitti.