Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in good condition. Loose plate folder of images. Plates in first class condition.. Hardcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> Rubens’s house now stands was purchased by the painter from Andries Bakker a merchant of Amsterdam in 1611. The amount paid was 10000 guilders. The grounds were described at the time as a bleaching garden and as being situated on the former Vaart street or as it is now called Rubens street running from the Meir to the Wapper. In the grounds there was a small house dating from 1520 which still stands to-day entirely intact. Seen from the front it is situated at the extreme left of the present complex and bears a gable. Afterwards a dwelling with a monumental entrance was built against one of its side- walls. Some time later Rubens erected his studio in Italian Renaissance style. This forms the right wing of the complex. It is presumed that as his fame and income increased the painter continually embellished his house and had not carried out all his plans at the time of his death. Shortly after his death the house was auctioned on the Vrijdag (Friday) Market but a purchase was not concluded. From 1642 to 1645 in which latter year she remarried H?l?ne Fourment rented the mansion for 400 guilders a year. In 1648 Sir William Cavendish Duke of Newcastle rented it from the heirs of the great painter. For some time therefore Rubens’s house was the meeting place of English royalists. When the French philosopher Descartes travelled to Stockholm in 1649 he broke his journey at Antwerp and stayed at Rubens’s house. In 1660 Rubens’s house was again offered for sale. Jacob Van Eycke became its owner. In 1680 his widow sold it to her brother Canon Hendrik Hillewerve who lived in it till 1690. The house passed through several hands. In 1763 it was sold to Chevalier Charles Joseph de Bosschaert. In 1798 it was requisitioned by the French and used as a prison for priests on whom sentence of exile had been passed but who were too weak to be transported. It remained the property of the de Bosschaert family until it was expropriated for the public benefit in 1937. As early as 1672 Burgomaster Van Schorel attempted to pur- chase Rubens’s house for the city of Antwerp with the object of prevent ing its mutilation but without success. The steps taken by Burgomaster De Wael in 1880 also failed. In 1913 new negotiations were entered into (MP)