RUBBLE, broken stone, of irregular size and shape. This word is closely connected in derivation with “rubbish,” which was formerly also applied to what we now call “rubble.” The earlier Middle English form was robeux or robows. It would appear that the original is an O. Fr. robel. Roba (older form robba) is found in Italian in the sense of refuse, trash. Robba is explained by Florio as a gown, or mantle, robe, wealth, goods, trash. The original sense was “spoil.” Thus, “robe,” “rob,” “rubbish” and “rubble” are all cognate.
“Rubble-work” is a name applied to several species of masonry (q.v.). One kind, where the stones are loosely thrown together in a wall between boards and grouted with mortar almost like concrete, is called in Italian muraglia di getto and in French bocage. Work executed with large stones put together without any attempt at courses is also called rubble.
RUBELLITE, a red variety of tourmaline (q.v.) used as a
gem-stone. It generally occurs crystallized on the walls of
cavities in coarse granitic rocks, where it is often associated
with a pink lithia-mica (lepidolite). The most valued kinds are
deep red; the colour being probably due to the presence of
manganese. Some of the finest rubellite is found in Siberia,
whence it is sometimes called siberite, or passes under the
misleading name of “Siberian ruby.” The mills at Ekaterinburg,
where it is cut and polished, draw most of their supplies
from the Ural Mountains—chiefly from Mursinka, Sarapulskaya
and Shaitanka, near Ekaterinburg—but specimens are occasionally
found at Nerchinsk in Transbaikalia. Burma is famous for rubellite, but little was known as to the conditions
of its occurrence there until after the British annexation, when
the old workings were visited and described by C. Barrington
Brown and by F. Noetling. The pits which yield rubellite
are dug in alluvial deposits in the Möng-long valley, some miles
to the S.E. of Mogok, the centre of the ruby country. It was
here that the Chinese obtained the rubellite so much valued in
China for buttons of the caps of mandarins of certain rank. In
the British Museum there is a remarkable specimen of crystallized
rubellite of large size and fine form, but of poor colour, which
was presented by the king of Ava to Colonel Michael Symes on
the occasion of his mission in 1795. Very fine rubellite is found in
the United States, notably at Mount Mica, near Paris, Oxford Co.,
Maine, where the crystals are often red at one end and green at
the other. Mount Rubellite, near Hebron, and Mount Apatite
at Auburn, are other localities in the same state from which
fine specimens are obtained. Chesterfield and Goshen, Mass.,
also yield red tourmaline, frequently associated with green in
the same crystal. Pink tourmaline also occurs, with lepidolite
and kunzite, in San Diego Co., California. In Europe rubellite
occurs sparingly at a few localities, as at San Piero in Elba and
at Penig in Saxony; but the mineral is rarely if ever fit for the
lapidary. (F. W. R.*)
RUBENS, PETER PAUL (1577–1640), Flemish painter, was
born at Siegen, in Westphalia, on the 29th of June 1577. His
father, Johannes Rubens, a druggist, although of humble
descent was a man of learning, and councillor and alderman in
his native town (1562). A Roman Catholic by birth, he became
a zealous upholder of the Reformation, and we find him spoken
of as le plus dacte Calviniste qui just pour lors au Bas Pays.
After the plundering of the Antwerp churches in 1566, the
magistrates were called upon for a justification. While openly
they declared themselves devoted sons of the church, a list
of the followers of the Reformed creed, headed by the name of
Anthony Van Stralen, the burgomaster, got into the hands of
the duke of Alva. This was a sentence of death for the magistrates,
and Johannes Rubens lost no time in quitting Spanish
soil, ultimately settling at Cologne (October 1568) with his
wife and four children.
In his new residence he became legal adviser to Anne of Saxony, the second wife of the prince of Orange, William the Silent. Before long it was discovered that their relations were not purely of a business kind. Thrown into the dungeons of Dillenburg, Rubens lingered there for many months, his wife, Maria Pypelincx, never relaxing her endeavours to get the undutiful husband restored to freedom. Two years elapsed before the prisoner was released, and then only to be confined to the small town of Siegen. Here he lived with his family from 1573 to 1578, and here Maria Pypelincx gave birth to Philip, afterwards town-clerk of Antwerp, and Peter Paul. A year after (May 1578) the Antwerp lawyer got leave to return to Cologne, where he died on the 18th of March 1587, after having, it is said, returned to Roman Catholicism.
Rubens went to Antwerp with his mother when he was scarcely ten years of age. He was an excellent Latin scholar, and also proficient in French, Italian, Spanish, English, German and Dutch. Part of his boyhood he spent as a page in the household of the Countess of Lalaing, in Brussels; but tradition adds that his mother allowed him to follow his proper vocation, choosing as his master Tobias Verhaecht. Not the slightest trace of this first master’s influence can be detected in Rubens’s works. Not so with Adam Van Noort, to whom the young man was next apprenticed. Van Noort, whose aspect of energy is well known through Van Dyck’s beautiful etching, was the highly esteemed master of numerous painters-among them Van Balen, Sebastian Vrancx, and Jordaens, later his son-in-law.
Rubens remained with Van Noort for the usual period of four years, thereafter studying under Otto Vaenius or Van Veen, a gentleman by birth, a most distinguished Latin scholar and a painter of very high repute. He was a native of Leiden, and only recently settled in Antwerp. Though Rubens never adopted his style of painting, the tastes of master and pupil had much in common, and some pictures by Otto Vaenius can be pointed out as having inspired Rubens at a more advanced period. For example, the “Magdalene anointing Christ’s Feet,” painted for the cathedral at Malaga, and now at the Hermitage in St Petersburg, closely resembles in composition the very important work of Otto Vaenius in the church at Bergues near Dunkirk.
In 1598, Adam Van Noort acting as dean of the Antwerp gild of painters, Rubens was officially recognized as “master”—that is, was allowed to work independently and receive pupils. His style at this early period may be judged from the by no means satisfactory “Holy Trinity” at Antwerp Museum, which already shows his bold, vigorous handling, and the “Portrait of a Youth” in the Munich Pinakothek.
From 1600 to the latter part of 16088 Rubens belonged to the household of Vincenzo Gonzaga, duke of Mantua. The duke, who spent some time at Venice in July 1600, had his attention drawn by one of his courtiers to Rubens’s genius, and immediately induced him to enter his service. The influence of the master’s stay at Mantua was of extreme importance, and cannot be too constantly kept in view in the study of his later works.
Sent to Rome in 1601, to take copies from Raphael for his master, he was also commissioned to paint several pictures for the church of Santa Croce, by the archduke Albrecht of Austria, sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands, and once, when he was a cardinal, the titular of that see. A copy of “Mercury and Psyche” after Raphael is preserved in the museum at Pesth. The religious paintings—“The Invention of the Cross,” “The Crowning with Thorns” and “The Crucifixion”—are to be found in the hospital at Grasse in Provence (Alpes Maritimes).
At the beginning of 1603, “The Fleming,” as he was termed at Mantua, was sent to Spain with a variety of presents for Philip III. and his minister the duke of Lerma, and thus had opportunity to spend a whole year at Madrid and become acquainted with some of Titian’s masterpieces. Of his own works, known to belong to the same period, in the Madrid Gallery, are “Heraclitus” and “Democritus.” Of Rubens’s abilities so far back as 1604 we get a more complete idea from an immense picture now in the Antwerp Gallery, the “Baptism of Our Lord,” originally painted for the Jesuits at Mantua. Here it may be seen to what degree Italian surroundings had influenced the household painter of Vincenzo Gonzaga. Vigorous to the extreme in design, he reminds us of Michelangelo as much as any of the degenerate masters of the Roman school
