Law and order in Ruben's 'Wolf and Fox Hunt.'

In 1986, Arnout Balis published the first comprehensive account of Rubens's hunting pictures in the Corpus Rubenianum series, laying the foundation for all future studies of the subject. With regard to A Wolf and Fox Hunt in New York [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED],(1) Balis resolved the problematic provenance of this very important picture,(2) Rubens's first monumental hunting scene. He demonstrated that it can be identified with the picture that the English ambassador at The Hague, Sir Dudley Carleton, was negotiating to buy in 1616-17, but failed to win when the duke of Aarschot, Philippe-Charles d'Arenberg, outbid him. The importance of this finding will become clear below. Moreover, Balis put to rest the view that the animals in the picture were painted by Frans Snyders, and he pointed to "the high quality of execution" throughout.(3) The picture has been universally admired, with the wolves in particular eliciting high praise. Rooses's observation that they are "superb" can be taken as representative.(4)

The one significant issue concerning the Wolf and Fox Hunt that Balls did not address is the subject of the picture, the hunt itself. He did not comment on its singularity, nor have others. Contrary to the impression that the picture makes, the scene does not show actual hunting practice, as documented in cynegetic literature. According to these texts, wolves and foxes are pursued separately, and different techniques are used in each case. A visual tradition cannot be identified as Rubens's source either; depictions of wolf hunts and depictions of fox hunts exist, but no picture shows them combined. Furthermore, it is not only the hunt that is problematic, but, in a certain sense, the animals as well. The ones that Rubens selects are scavengers, which anyone may hunt,(5) rather than noble creatures, such as the stag or the boar, whose chase is the prerogative of the nobility.(6) The lowliness of the wolf and the fox would seem to disqualify them from featuring in any major composition, particularly in the very painting Rubens was using to promote himself as the latter-day heir of van Orley and Stradanus, the sixteenth-century masters of monumental hunting imagery. Since there can be no question regarding Rubens's conversance with hunting theory and practice and with the iconography of hunts, we must assume that his departure from custom was deliberate and carried out for considered reasons. What these may have been is the principal concern of this study. I argue that Rubens turned to the hunting legislation proposed by the archdukes in 1613 for his subject and that this choice had a political aspect. The share that the science of natural history played in shaping Rubens's ideas about the wolf and the fox - a question hitherto overlooked - is considered here for the first time. Additional issues in this study include Rubens's pictorial sources, and how the Hunt's original significance may have been amplified by events in the 1630s.

The Wolf and the Fox in Natural-History Texts

Much of the effect of the picture rests on the vivid depiction of the wolves and foxes, whose defensive stratagems and ferocious expressions are entirely convincing and appear to be based on observations from life. Yet it is unlikely that participation in an actual hunt accounts for this verism, since the tumultuous circumstances of a chase are clearly ill suited for detailed studies; at best, only an impression could have been gained from witnessing such an event. Rather, Rubens may have availed himself of living or dead specimens obtained from the environs of Antwerp, where wolves and foxes abounded. If the animal was captured alive and held in a pen or cage, its physical attributes, movements, demeanor, and passions, in particular rage and fear, could have been observed in safety and at length. Alternatively, a dead animal for a limited time or stuffed might have been instructive as a model; and a live dog could have served for the wolf, since the dog (Canis familiaris), a domesticated descendant of the wolf (Canis lupus), has the same physical structure as its ancestor.(7) In the absence of any surviving preparatory sketches for the animals, however, these scenarios must remain conjectural. Moreover, the graphic depiction of the wolves and foxes cannot be explained merely by positing the use of models. In Rubens's working process, life drawing, undertaken to clarify a pose or another significant feature of a figure, occurred after a composition was well advanced. Rubens, therefore, had a mental image already in mind before resorting to empirical observation. In this case, various types of literature - in particular, scientific treatises and hunting manuals - as well as other works of art were formative in shaping Rubens's vision of the wild beasts.

The type of scientific literature that Rubens consulted comes under the heading of natural history, one of whose chief concerns is the appearance, habits, and behavior of animals. Among the ancient authors whom Rubens probably read in this field are Pliny, Aelian, and Oppian, while Conrad Gesner (1516-1565) and Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) were the sixteenth-century naturalists he seems to have been most familiar with. Indeed, in 1613, he purchased Aldrovandi's three-volume Ornithologiae and his volumes on insects and aquatic creatures (De Insectis; De Piscibus), while in 1617 he rounded out the set with the purchase of the two-volume study on quadrupeds (De Quadrupedibus).(8) From Gesner's five-volume Historia Animalium he acquired, in 1613 from the same dealer, Balthasar Moretus, the treatise on serpents (De Serpentibus). The content of natural-history literature has great range, and includes empirical observations, traditional lore, ethical and religious commentary, pictorial traditions, symbolic meanings, and medicinal qualities. The early modern texts in particular are encyclopedic, enlarging the scope of the material far beyond that addressed in classical works.