Rubens in the Grasse's Cathedral - a detective story?

Grasse is rightly proud of the Rubens paintings displayed in our small cathedral on Le Puy. Actually, they only reached Grasse in 1827 and only two of the three are by the hand of the great artist, but at least those two are undoubtedly by Rubens himself, without the aid of his later army of assistants.

Right to left: 'Crown of Thorns', 'St Helena', 'Raising of the Cross'. There's no facility in the cathedral to put a euro in a slot and temporarily light them up, which is rather a pity.

I have been trying to trace how they came to be in the cathedral, but it’s been an eye-opener to find that it’s nothing like as easy as it sounds. Trying to work out who’s telling untruths, whether inadvertent or not, is part of the problem.

Although it’s not obvious to the casual glance, two, ‘Saint Helena and the Exaltation of the Cross’ and ‘The Crown of Thorns’ are painted on wood, and the third (‘The Raising of The Cross’) on canvas. Looking more closely, you can see the seams in the wood on the first two images and it’s the 'Raising', with its smooth surface as a bit of a giveaway, that’s not by Rubens. It’s a much later copy of what was either a damaged or more likely just lost original.

Painted in Rome

Rubens’ family was from Antwerp but much of his childhood was spent around Cologne. He travelled to Italy in 1600 at the age of 23, first to Venice, where he saw the works of Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto, then to Mantua, Florence and by 1601 Rome. How he got the commission to make three paintings for the St Helena chapel in the church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme on the eastern side of Rome shows that who you know matters, not just how good you are.

Saint Helena and the ecstasy of the Holy Cross (photo Dennis Jarvis)

Santa Croce is one of the ‘pilgrim churches’ of Rome, along with St Peters and others; as such, it was assigned to a cardinal as principal priest. Until 1598, the cardinal-priest had been Albert of Hapsburg, a grandson of Charles Quint, whose empire dominated Europe in the early sixteenth century and whose son was Philip II of Spain. Albert, as was not unusual for the royalty of the day, was made a cardinal in 1577 when he was 18, and it is clear he took his responsibilities for Santa Croce seriously. But Philip, as the dominant force of the Hapsburgs, had other ideas for him.

He took part in the organization of the Armada against England in 1588 and in 1596 he was made Governor General of the Spanish Netherlands, including Antwerp. He had to relinquish his cardinalship when he married his cousin Isabella, who was Philip II’s daughter, in 1599.

How did that affect Rubens? Well, an eminent Flemish artist named Otto van Veen was commissioned to paint Albert’s portrait in Antwerp in 1597. And Peter Paul Rubens was van Veen’s star pupil.

The Crown of Thorns (photo Dennis Jarvis)

So when Rubens turned up in Rome in 1601 at a time when Albert’s ambassador to the Holy See was seeking a painter for the chapel in Albert’s old church of Santa Croce, he was in prime position – and duly got the job. Albert probably never saw the paintings, but he must have had good reports, because when Rubens eventually returned to Antwerp in 1609, he was made court painter.

The paintings go on their travels

The works are known to have remained in the chapel at Santa Croce until about 1750, when the interior of the church was reconstructed, and they were moved to the monastery of the church. By then, they had suffered from dampness in their original chapel, which was semi-subterranean and their condition had probably deteriorated.

It seems that they remained in the monastery until some time before 1806, when they disappear from contemporary guides to Santa Croce.

Auctioned in London

Somehow, they turn up in a London auction house in 1812. And not just any auction house either. The auction room of the splendidly Dickensian-named Frank Squibb was on Savile Row and he was well known in London, perhaps because he sold the valuables of an aristocratic but impoverished clientele. Here he is in a political cartoon of 1821 by George Cruikshank, a caricaturist and illustrator of the day.

Frank Squibb 'auctioning' Caroline of Brunswick (National Portrait Gallery, London)

The fat lady whom Mr Squibb is ‘auctioning’ is Caroline of Brunswick, the (to put it mildly) estranged wife of George IV, who locked her out of his coronation in Westminster Abbey that year. It’s difficult to imagine an auctioneer being famous enough to be featured in a satirical image today!

We know how much the paintings made (‘Saint Helena’ and the ‘Crown of Thorns’ £400 and £800 respectively and ‘Raising of The Cross’ £280) and Squibb’s records show the latter being re-sold in 1821 for £225. Even that amount is equivalent to over £30,000 today, so it seems a little unlikely that it was a copy which was being sold.

Arrival in Grasse

The next trace of them is in 1827, when a letter of 1881 written by the secretary of a committee of experts on Rubens, states that in that year they were acquired by a M. Pérolle, described as a Grasse ‘industrialist’, in payment of a debt of 70,000 francs (about £3,000 then) due to him from a business in Leipzig. There is no information on how they came to be in central Germany.

Pérolle was a well-known Grasse family of perfumiers and notaries. This member of the family is said to have profited greatly from pioneering the supply of materials to Paris perfumiers after the end of the Napoleonic wars. He must indeed have been successful, because he donated the proceeds of his bad debt recovery, in the shape of the paintings, to the chapel of Grasse’s Hôpital de la Charite, which stood on the south-western end of Cours Honoré Cresp.

Hôpital de Charité (demolished 1898)

The hospital was demolished in 1898, and it’s not clear what happened to the paintings. According to a publication by the town, they have been displayed in the cathedral only since 1972. This seems to be confirmed because in a little book on Grasse published in 1963, Hervé de Fontmichel, a former mayor, describes several paintings in the cathedral but not the Rubens. On the other hand, there are postcards in existence of 'St Helena' and the 'Crown of Thorns' which were taken by a photographer named Pierre Appollot. Appollot was only in Grasse from 1940 until his death in 1949 – so he must have had access to the paintings during that period, but where were they?

They don't seem to have gone to the new hospital of Petit-Paris, where the chapel was itself demolished recently. There is good documentation of the paintings hung there, and they don’t include the Rubens. Perhaps someone will tell me where they were between 1898 and 1972!

Two real Rubens and one copy

The other obvious question is when was the 'Raising of the Cross' substituted by a copy, painted on canvas? One report says that the 'Raising' and the 'Crown of Thorns' were replaced in the chapel after reconstruction of the church in 1750, so it is possible that a copy of the 'Raising' was made at that time, because the original had deteriorated too much.

Raising of the Cross - copy of a lost Rubens (photo Dennis Jarvis)

But although the price paid for the Raising in 1812 and 1821 was lower than for the other two, it still seems high for a copy. There is also a story that after it was sold on, the original was lost at sea, so the copy could have been made after that. Since no art laboratory is interested in examining copies in order to trace when they were made, probably we will never know.

But even if it was made shortly after the removal from the chapel at Santa Croce in 1750, it seems certain that the 'Raising of the Cross' is a copy made long after Rubens’ death in 1640 and the dispersal of his studio.

Early but genuine Rubens

Although the critics say that the two paintings are immature and early works, they are also important for that very reason. After Rubens became successful (only a few years after 1601) and then rich, the experts say that paintings from his workshop can be divided into three categories: those he painted by himself, those he painted in part (mainly hands and faces), and copies supervised from his drawings or oil sketches. He had many apprentices and students, the best known being Anthony van Dyck.

The Grasse pictures are firmly in the first category. Even in 1601, he travelled with a pupil, but only one, so we can say we are looking at two genuine articles. They also certainly lack the ‘Rubenesque’ figures so familiar in his later works.

So if you come to Grasse, do visit the cathedral: you can see free-of-charge the genuine work of one of the world’s very greatest artists in our town.