The Union of Earth and Water

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The Union of Earth and Water: Peter Paul Rubens

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Peter Paul Rubens Oil Painting - The Union of Earth and Water

Keywords: Union, Earth, Water

Work Overview: The Union of Earth and Water
Artist Peter Paul Rubens
Year c. 1618
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 222.5 cm × 180.5 cm (87.6 in × 71.1 in)
Location Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg

The Union of Earth and Water is a Baroque painting by Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens, showing Cybele as the personification of earth holding the horn of plenty and Neptune as the personification of water in the center. [1] The pair is crowned by the goddess Victoria and the union is heralded through a conch by the Triton below.[1] The union symbolizes fertility, wealth and prosperity, specifically the city of Antwerp and the river Scheldt whose mouth in Rubens' times was blocked by the Dutch depriving Flanders of the access to the sea.[1] The painting features a pyramidal composition, symmetry and the balance of forms. It was influenced by late Italian Renaissance, particularly by Venetian artists.[1]

A smaller copy of the painting made in the Rubens' workshop was owned by the Russian businessman Vladimir Logvinenko. Following the abolition of a thirty per cent import duty on artworks in 2004, Logvinenko brought the copy from London to Moscow.

The painting is housed in the Rubens Hall of the Hermitage Museum, Russia. Previously it had been in the Chigi Collection in Rome from which it was acquired by the Hermitage Museum between 1798 and 1800.

In the 16-17th centuries the four elements (Earth, Air, Fire and Water) are usually represented as classical gods and goddess with their attributes. Earth, as a woman has the attributes that belong to the goddesses of fertility (e.g. the cornucopia of Ceres). Water is personified by a river good with his overturned urn.

Peter Paul Rubens' Union of Earth and Water is an allegory reminding the Flemings that their country’s outlet to the sea is essential to their prosperity. Portrayed are Cybele, the goddess of the Earth, carrying the horn of plenty – the symbol of fertility and wealth – and Neptune, the sea god holding his traditional trident. In this picture, as in most of his works, Rubens extols wealth and abundance along with the joy of living.

The artist depicted Poseidon as an impressive, white-bearded old man, squatting on a rock in an awkward position, with his right hand resting on his trident - the symbol of sea power, the left hand holding a beautiful young woman by the hand, waiting for an answer from the goddess. An aloof look of the young girl speaks eloquently about her indifference to his companion, here it is, being the queen of the situation, makes the wait so long to be resolved. According to ancient mythology, the goddess Hera and the god Poseidon had not entered into any alliance, even though they were brother and sister, but still shows a picture together and under a laurel crown in the hands of a winged Nike - the goddess of triumph and victory under their feet in the water, peaceful frolicking children, blows a conch Poseidon satellite, Triton.

On the canvas of Rubens we are talking about something else. After all, no doubt that the young beauty Hera - the birthplace master of Antwerp, and the mythical Poseidon, none other than the one who in the 17th century, ruled on all the seas - monarchy of Spain, originally managed by the Habsburgs. What had been waiting for Antwerp - out to sea, and thus the future prosperity of the city, it happened!

Remains a mystery only the tiger lurking in the lower left corner of the picture, in the predatory grin looks at the cornucopia and clung to him with their clawed paws, like a reminder of the artist's contemporaries experienced city epidemics and diseases. But it is possible that the great Rubens left us some unfathomable mystery, known to him alone.

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On 20 May 2004 two works by the great Flemish painter from the private collection of Moscow art connoisseur V.A. Logvinenko were put on display in the Rubens Hall. These are the small-scale paintings The Adoration of the Shepherds and The Union of Earth and Water. Both compositions are linked with earlier works by the artist. The Union of Earth and Water is a smaller version of a large decorative canvas that is in the State Hermitage collection. The Adoration of the Shepherds repeats motifs found in several paintings of the Italian and early Antwerp period of the master, though on the whole it is a completely new composition.

The subject of the Hermitage painting of The Union of Earth and Water and of its smaller size version is the glorification of the alliance of two elements: Cybele and Neptune. Winged Victory crowns the gods with laurels while Triton blows on a seashell, thereby calming the waves in which cherubs are playing. A tiny tiger strains to reach a cluster of grapes. The composition expresses a formula that was established ever since the 16th century: Peace brings Abundance.

The small-scale version of The Union of Earth and Water was evidently made to order for a certain patron. It is well known that Rubens entrusted his assistants with making copies of earlier compositions, though he followed the work in process and intervened at various stages. Technical analysis and visual inspections carried out in the Hermitage prove that Rubens’ assistants carried out the preparation of the composition, the portrayal of Triton and the two cherubs, the tiger and cornucopia. However, the most important part of the composition – the central group – was done with the master’s participation. The peculiarities of the painting and technique of execution find similarities in Rubens’ works from the second half of the 1620’s, which enable us to establish the date during this period.

The special technical characteristics of the execution correspond to the master’s working methods. The painting was done using the traditional Flemish technique of semi-transparent, multi-layered, glossy painting with a white chalk base coat that optically enhances the brilliance of the layers of pigment. This technique is the reason for the greater luminosity and higher color intensity of the paints used in the small-scale Union of Earth and Water compared with the Hermitage painting.

Among art historian specialists who have performed an expert analysis of the painting, the most authoritative conclusion was provided in 1965 by Professor Leo van Puyvelde (Belgium), a specialist on Rubens’ work. He considered this work to be a small-size version of the large composition by Rubens that now belongs to the Hermitage.

The Adoration of the Shepherds has an intimate character and is noted for the emphasis on the genre treatment of a subject from the Evangels. The figures of Mary, the Christ child, the shepherds, youths and shepherdesses in the right part of the composition can be traced back to the group of personages in the large altarpiece called The Adoration of the Shepherds (or The Nativity) which Rubens painted in 1608 for the San Spirito Church in the city of Fermo. The small painting does not have the group of angels over the creche or the figure of Joseph.

The small-scale Adoration of the Shepherds is rich in genre motifs that are inherent in the narrative principle and this distinguishes it from the lÞfty structure of other altarpieces. The general tonality used in the Adoration from the V.A. Logvinenko collection is close to a Hermitage oil sketch, although it is difficult to compare painterly signatures, since the esquisse is done in a broad and energetic manner while the Moscow painting was done with a fine brush and smaller strokes of oil paint. The landscape background is typical of Rubens in his Italian and early Antwerp periods. The figures to the right and left of the composition are close to the master’s painterly signature. X-rays of the work show a white-ground preparation of the composition, which was typical of Rubens. However, a number of points in the composition and the professional level of its execution, which though high is not up to the level of Rubens himself, compel us to suppose that the painting was begun by Rubens but was finished by one of the painter’s students.

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