III. Painting Technique and Restoration (PDF, 5,21 MB) - Koninklijk ...

BULLETIN
BULLETIN
heifer’s head is painted with a high degree of finish
(ill. 25) while her hind legs, in shadow, have a more
summary, almost sketchy execution (ill. 26).
This is a painting that can best be appreciated by standing
at some distance. As we have seen Rubens employed
a number of devices to enhance the element of space
within this composition. The final brush strokes may
well have been the rapidly applied highlights added
to the fork in the foreground and some of the more
hurriedly applied cobwebs in the rafters, again with the
idea of drawing us into this remarkable painting.
Susan Farnell
Ill.25 The central heifer’s
head is painted with a high
degree of finish.
Rubens is believed to have retouched The Prodigal Son later on in his life.
The painting was, in any case, in his possession at the time of his death.
Apparently the artist was unable to resist the temptation of making
adjustments to the composition. Unlike the other faces in the painting,
that of the stable hand on the far left is executed in very expressive, patchy
brushstrokes. This style does not correspond with the smooth, calligraphic
approach that is so characteristic of Rubens’s work from around 1618. The
white horse also appears to have been retouched. Its head, unlike the rest of
its body, was not kept in reserve, but sketched onto the brown background
colour in a few quick light brushstrokes. The hind end and tail have been
accentuated with some touches of white paint, so that the horse catches
more light and thereby draws the viewer’s attention. Also, Rubens added
some volume to the right flank of the brown horse. The purpose of these
corrections was possibly to achieve a better balance in the composition.
Without the alterations, clearly the most illuminated areas in the picture
were on the right-hand side.
In the print after the painting by Schelte Adamsz Bolswert, one notices
that the large deciduous tree in the farmyard was originally a rather measly
pollard willow. We were able to determine by means of an infrared image
that Rubens reserved the shape of this pollard willow in the paint layer, as
we notice the stripy imprimatura through the thinly applied paint of the
trunk (ill. 7). This is however not the case for the rest of the trunk and the
branches, which were painted over the greyish-blue sky. Perhaps Rubens
chose to add a lush crown to soften the transition from the bright sky
to the angular contours of the barn. Rubens is known to have retouched
other paintings which he felt no longer tied in with his artistic aims. In
quite a few cases, such corrections involved adjustments and sometimes
enlargements of the support. 18
There are hardly any other paintings of this size in Rubens’s oeuvre that have
been painted as sketchily as The Prodigal Son. The explanation probably
lies in the fact that the barn, which takes up most of the composition, is
shrouded in twilight, and Rubens tended to provide far less detail in the
darker areas of his paintings than in the brighter ones. The only comparable
“cabinet picture” is The Calydonian Boar Hunt in Los Angeles (c. 1611), 19
in which the boar as well as the foreground and background are also
rendered rather sketchily. There are however a
number altarpieces, including the Adoration of
the Magi in Antwerp (1624), the St. Ildefonso
Triptych in Vienna (1630-31) and the Adoration
of the Magi in Cambridge (1633-34), which
were executed with similar economy of means.
The same holds for the monumental Hercules
Drunk in Dresden (1613-14). 20 Rubens executed
these large paintings himself, quickly, alla
prima, with medium-rich paints that he could
apply thinly to the panels. As a consequence,
the chalk glue ground is visible through the
paint layer in many places in these works. As
in The Prodigal Son, individual brushstrokes
in the abovementioned paintings are visible
Ill. 7 The grey stripey imprimatura is visible under the
transparent paint layer of the tree and the wooden post.