Blank space on page for possible drawing (MS IX)—Since the heading of this section is placed significantly below the closing two lines of the preceding prose piece, at the top of the page, leaving blank a vertical column measuring approximately sixteen lines of Ruskinʼs cursive copperplate script, it is reasonable to assume that he intended to paste a drawing here, but never produced it, or that he produced a drawing, but it has been removed or lost. As a possible source for a vignette, Ruskin may have planned to use his own tour sketch, “Church at Cologne”—a vertical image and therefore appropriate to this space, but one that he would have needed to reduce in dimensions. See Drawings from the Tour of 1833; and Missing and Unidentified Drawings for the Composite‐Genre Illustrated Travelogue (MS IX) and Related 1833 Tour Sketches.

“Long had we toiled to gain a brow” (MS IX; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—The Ruskins traveled from Aix‐la‐Chapelle to Cologne by way of Jülich (Juliers). In his 1828 tour account, John Barrow (1764–1848) similarly complained about finding “the face of the country flat, cold, and uninteresting” (Family Tour through South Holland, 224).

“Hills in the distant haze were seen” (MS IX; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—The Siebengebirge or Seven Hills, which form the most imposing peaks among this range along the middle Rhine. From above Cologne, which is situated on both banks of the Rhine, the hills can be seen in the southeast, beyond the riverʼs east bank. Mary Richardson, in her travel diary, says the family enjoyed a “beautiful view of Rhine and the seven mountains” from the next stage downriver, when they reached “a terrace close to” Bonn (Diary of Mary Richardson, 1833, 21).

Frances Trollope (1779–1863), in her account of an 1833 Continental tour, wrote that when she first caught sight of the “wild outline” of the Siebengebirge “beyond the plain on which Cologne is situated”, the hills “set the imagination busily at work, to anticipate all the wonders behind them”; and “it was impossible to look upon the Rhine, and upon the misty sevenfold grandeur of these hills, without longing instantly to embark, and be amongst them” (Trollope, Belgium and Western Germany in 1833, 1:123).

“And this is the birthplace of Rubens”! (MS VIII; MS IX; Works [1903])—The birthplace of Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) has been disputed since the seventeenth century, when writers made claims for both Antwerp and Cologne. The controversy became heated in 1853, thirty years after the Ruskinsʼ visit, when a Dutch historian uncovered a story about Rubensʼs father, who was arrested for an adulterous affair with Anna of Saxony, imprisoned, and then sent to Siegen in Westphalia, where he lived under conditions of house arrest. He was joined in 1573 by his wife and children, who had been living in Cologne. According to this account, the family stayed in Siegen until 1578, a year after Rubensʼs birth, and then they returned to Cologne, where Rubens spent his boyhood until 1589. In that year, his father died, and the family relocated to Antwerp. These revelations of the affair in the nineteenth century—far from settling the question of Rubensʼs birthplace, by placing the event logically in Siegen—only fired the respective champions of Cologne and Antwerp to defend their claims. Scholarly debate on the subject persists to the present day, but the most persuasive arguments point to Siegen.

Cologne may have become known as the birthplace not only because Rubens definitely grew up there, but also because his mother connived at identifying the city as the familyʼs continuous residence prior to her husbandʼs death and the move to Antwerp. She had strong motives to suppress the familyʼs associations with Siegen, since exposure of the scandal of her husbandʼs love affair would have disastrously damaged her familyʼs fortunes. The house in Cologne that was marked for tourists as the birthplace was the Gronsfelder Hof, no. 10, in the Sternengasse, a mansion that was also known for providing a refuge for Marie deʼ Medici in the final years of her exile from the French court (Velde and Valkeneers, Birth of Rubens, 7–12, 52, 58, 70). The French queen was a major patron of Rubens, as was another seventeenth‐century resident of the Sternengasse, the important collector Everhard Jabach IV. He commissioned Rubensʼs altarpiece painting for the cathedral, the Crucifixion of Saint Peter (see below).

“I . . . could not stir out” (MS VIII; MS IX; Works [1903])—Ruskinʼs cousin, Mary Richardson, makes no mention of John being unable to accompany the family party on 27 May 1833, when they toured these sights (Diary of Mary Richardson, 1833, 19–20).

“Rubensʼ last picture, . . . , the crucifixion of St Peter, bequeathed by him at his death to his native city” (MS VIII; MS IX; Works [1903])—The Crucifixion of Saint Peter, ca. 1637, High Cathedral of Saint Peter, Cologne. Toward the end of his life, Rubens painted this harrowing work for the high altar of the church in which he was probably confirmed as a boy, and in which his father was entombed. In the picture, Peter is martyred by being nailed by his feet and hands while being hung upside down on a cross. While the personal connections were compelling for Rubens, with Peterʼs upside‐down cross effectively pointing at his fatherʼs tomb, the commission came from the collector, Everhard Jabach IV, who was interested more in creating an epitaph for his own father. A tradition relayed by Ruskin, therefore, that Rubens “bequeathed . . . [the altarpiece] at his death to his native city” is not accurate. Nonetheless, Rubens overrode his patronʼs suggestions for more dignified subjects from Peterʼs life in favor of this scene. Along with any personal significance the subject may have held for Rubens, artistic fame was also connected with the subject, which had prompted competition among painters in the sixteenth and the earlier seventeenth centuries (Sauerländer, The Catholic Rubens, 219–32). The upside‐down crucifixion of Peter was the subject also of Michelangeloʼs last painting, his fresco The Crucifixion of St. Peter for the Pauline Chapel in the Apostolic Palace, Rome.

Joshua Reynolds did not admire Rubensʼs Crucifixion in particular, although his appraisal of Rubens overall gradually rose in estimation. In A Journey to Flanders and Holland (1797), Reynolds acknowledged that Rubens expressed “his own approbation of this picture”, which was “painted a little time before Rubensʼs death”, and which the painter declared “the best he ever painted”. Thanks to this comment, the painting held “great fame”, Reynolds admitted, and he traveled from Düsseldorf to Cologne “on purpose to see it; but it by no means recompenced us for our journey”, for he considered parts of the figure “ill drawn, or rather in a bad taste of drawing”. “Many parts of this picture are so feebly drawn, and with so tame a pencil, that I cannot help suspecting that Rubens died before he had cmpleted it, and that it was finished by some of his scholars” (Reynolds, Works [1797], 2:111). Ruskin appears unacquainted with this opinion; and indeed, the Ruskins may have been responding primarily to the fame bestowed on the painting by Rubensʼs own assessment of it. Another influence besides traditions presented to tourists was changing taste: the huge flow of Old Master paintings into Britain during the Napoleonic era had shifted taste from neoclassicism to “the warmth and colour of Venetian, Dutch, and Flemish masters” (Haskell, Rediscoveries in Art, 87).

According to accounts published 1833–36—in guidebooks to the Continent by Mariana Starke and by John Murray III, and in a Rhine tour by the English artist and teacher, James Mathews Leigh (1808–60)—it was commonly known that the altarpiece regularly on view in Cologne Cathedral was “a most wretched copy” of Rubensʼs Crucifixion, as Murray warns, “painted at the time when the original . . . was carried away to Paris” during occupation by the French Republic. The painting was repatriated, however; and Leigh describes how, “for a small fee”, the sacristan turned the frame on a pivot to display the original, mounted behind the copy. The original was regularly on view on Sundays and during festivals, according to Murray (Hand‐book for Travellers on the Continent, 206; Leigh, Rhenish Album, 103; and see Starke,Travels in Europe, 677).

The Ruskins viewed the painting on a Monday, 27 May 1833. In her diary, Mary Richardson described the “expression of agony and resignation of St Peterʼs face and the indifference in those of the executioners” as “wonderfully done”—a strange impression, given that the expression of the principal executioner, which is turned fully to the viewer, shows demonic viciousness (Diary of Mary Richardson, 1833, 19–20). If Ruskin did see the Crucifixion in 1833, but, for whatever reason, chose not to write about it, in later years his opinion of the painting did not improve. Privately, he wrote that he considered it among “the most brutal and beastly pictures I ever saw in my life”; and publicly, he listed it among the proofs that, in Counter‐Reformation painting, “the Flemish and Dutch masters are always languid unless they are profane” (Ruskin, Works, 7:328–29).

In another significant encounter with Catholic art in Cologne, Mary Richardson recorded that the family “went to see a private collection of pictures belonging to a Mr. Walroff”. This would have been the exhibited portion of an extensive collection of paintings, drawings, sculptures, engravings and woodcuts, manuscripts, books, and other artistic and scientific objects willed to the city of Cologne by Ferdinand Franz Wallraf (1748–1824). Donated on condition that the collection be kept publicly accessible “in the service of Art and Science”, the “Wallrafianum”, as it was called, was housed throughout the 1830s in the Kõlner Hof, a dilapidated eighteenth-century residence formerly belonging to the Archbishop of Cologne. The paintings included an unusually large and representative collection of Gothic and early Renaissance art from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries, both southern and northern European. Mary dwelled on a “Last Judgment”—likely a 1435 panel (from a larger work on that theme) by Stefan Lochner—that Mary described as “Christ sitting in the clouds [being] the principal object, and round Him . . . many angels of strange shapes”, while “below in foreground of picture are evil spirits of different odd shapes, pulling people out of graves and dragging them away to everlasting punishment”, the condemned including “several Roman Catholic priests and cardinals”. Of later art, she mentions “a large one of St. Francis by Rubens, very fine and rather different from his usual colouring”—surely the Stigmatization of St. Francis, which measures 382 by 243 cm. Both works were included in the original Wallraf collection (Diary of Mary Richardson, 1833, 18–19; Budde, Wallraf‐Richartz Museum, 6, 16, 30, 54).

“There is, in many, in most, of the pictures of Rubens . . . an unpleasingness, that does him dishonour” (MS IX; Works [1903])—In British criticism of Rubens, a foundation was laid by Jonathan Richardson (1667–1745) in the Essay on the Theory of Painting (1715), in which Richardson followed the French critic, Roger de Piles (1635–1709), in assessing Rubens in terms of the persistent academic debate over the merits of color versus line, personalized as the rubenistes versus the poussinistes, although Richardson listed Rubens as a master in both categories. Joshua Reynolds (1723–92), in the Discourses (1769–90), frames his discussion in the same terms of Rubens versus Poussin, but he finds Rubens wanting both in composition and coloring. In composition, Reynolds asserts in Discourse 5, his “art is too apparent”, his figures exhibiting “expression” and “energy”, but lacking “simplicity and dignity”; and in coloring, there is “too much of what we call tinted”. In what perhaps comes closest in the Discourses to the criticism relayed by Ruskin in “Cologne”, Reynolds believes that, in the “higher walks of painting” (i.e., history and religious painting), Rubens failed in a “nicety of distinction and elegance of mind”. Despite these detractions, Reynolds regarded Rubensʼs work overall as “a remarkable instance of the same mind being seen in all the various parts of the art” so that “whilst his works continue before us, . . . his deficiencies are fully supplied”.

In 1781, when Reynolds took a tour of the Low Countries, his estimation of Rubens was raised by observing more of the painterʼs work. The change is summarized in “Character of Rubens”, an essay within Reynoldsʼs notes from the tour, which were published posthumously as A Journey to Flanders and Holland (1797). The “Character of Rubens” begins by challenging criticism with “the works of men of genius”, in which “great faults are united with great beauties”. As in Discourse 5, Reynolds understands Rubens according to “the genius which prevails and illuminates the whole”, but the English critic goes on to develop his ideas oppositely to the young Ruskinʼs, for now he finds: “It is only in large compositions that his [Rubensʼs] powers seem to have room to expand themselves. . . . His superiority is not seen in easel pictures”—the more intimate scale preferred by Ruskin. Rubensʼs best works, Reynolds goes on, “flow with a freedom and prodigality, as if they cost him nothing”. Respecting the traditional contest between color and line, Reynolds reflects Richardsonʼs assessment by placing Rubens high in both categories: “The striking brilliancy of his colours, and their lively opposition to each other, the flowing liberty and freedom of his outline, and animated pencil, with which every object is touched, all contribute to awaken and keep alive the attention of the spectator”. Thus, a view that in the Discourses was offered as a concession, now reads as an inevitability: Rubens achieves “the complete uniformity in all the parts of the work”, a unity that seems to “grow out of one mind”. The “confidence” of that mind places Rubens above rules, which are “subject to his control”, rather than he being “himself subject to the rules”. His “originality of manner” can therefore “be truly said to have extended the limits of the art”.

Even in the “Character of Rubens”, however, Reynolds admits to some shortcomings in Rubensʼs “excellencies, which would have perfectly united with his style”, and this list of failings possibly corresponds to some of Ruskinʼs comments in “Cologne”. In the figures, Reynolds finds wanting a “poetical conception of character”; and in his “representations of the highest characters in the christian or the fabulous world, . . . the spectator finds little more than mere mortals, such as he meets with every day” (Reynolds, Works [1797], 1:89–90; 2:115, 117, 118–19, 121–22; and see White, “Rubens and British Art”, 30, 33–35).

Throughout Modern Painters I, Ruskinʼs estimate of Rubens remained high, and he followed Reynolds in reverencing the “mind” of the painter, although tempering this judgment with an early Victorian alertness for a lack of earnestness: “I never have spoken, and I never will speak, of Rubens but with the most reverential feeling; and whatever imperfections in his art may have resulted from his unfortunate want of seriousness and incapability of true passion, his calibre of mind was originally such that I believe the world may see another Titian [1447–1576] and another Raffaelle [1483–1520], before it sees another Rubens” (Ruskin, Works, 3:290). In Modern Painters V, Ruskin reassessed Rubens as a type of the Counter‐Reformation, as “having no belief in spiritual existences, no interests or affections beyond the grave” and as better understood in terms of “pure animalism” (Ruskin, Works, 7:328, 329).

“There is a picture . . . the St Ambrosius, I think, kneeling before a crucifix” (MS IX; Works [1903])—Unidentified. While Ruskinʼs description might fit any number of Rubensʼs easel pictures featuring a single saint, I have located no picture of Saint Ambrose, except those in which Rubens depicts the saint among a group of holy figures.

“Reader, beware of the Grosser Rheinberg hotel . . . you will have some idea of the Rhine, as seen from the bedroom windows of the Grosser Rheinberg” (MS IX; Works [1903])—According to Mary Richardson, when the family reached Cologne, they went first to the “Rheinbergh”, where they were given “not good apartments, house so full, a so so dinner”; therefore, after their meal, they decamped to the “Couronne Impèriale”, “where George IV stopped”, and found better accommodations (Diary of Mary Richardson, 1833, 17–18).

In his 1836 guidebook, John Murray III identifies the “Gross Rheinberg” as an inn near the river, “conveniently placed on the waterʼs edge, and close to the steamers”, but warns that the hotel is “deficient in comfort and badly managed”; by comparison, the “Cour Imperial” or “Kaiserlicher Hof” was “situated in the middle of the town, and a long way from the Rhine”, but still “far the best” in quality (Hand‐book for Travellers on the Continent, 206).

The artist James Mathews Leigh, who lodged in this hotel possibly in the same year as the Ruskinsʼ tour, wrote with a sardonic edge similar to (if more easy going than) Ruskinʼs narrator about the German cuisine, and about the view from the “brilliancy of the saloon at the Grosse Rheinberg” with its “nine lofty windows which overlook the Rhine”. More bemused than Ruskin is by the preponderance of the activities of the “bourgeoisie” over the effects of the picturesque, Leigh describes the view of the bridge of boats extending across the river, with its toll booth manned by Prussian guards, who raised a crossbar to admit carriages on business as well as Colognese promenaders, “the little swarthy forms of the gay and the idle of the inhabitants, who ever and anon profiting by the raising of the barrier, rushed to the scene of their enjoyment”. As Leigh watched, the promenadersʼ safety seemed threatened by the bridge parting to allow passage of huge raft carrying commercial provisions (Leigh, Rhenish Album, 96–100).

“[D]im outline of the seven mountains” (MS IX; Works [1903])—The Siebengebirge (see above).

“They showed us in a little Gothic chapel, three skulls which . . . looked not the less horrible, though a diamond beamed through the one and a bar of gold bound the other” (MS IX; Works [1903])—In 1833, Mrs. Trollope was likewise skeptical, though impressed in spite of her English Protestantism by the “wonder of wonders” in Cologne Cathedral, “the Mausoleum of the Eastern Kings”. Having paid her fee, she was “informed that this splendid monument contains not only the bones of Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, but likewise those of St. Felix, St. Nabor, and St. Gregory. . . . [T]he shrine itself is most superb; and when you enter the little tabernacle in which it is deposited, there is something so mystically glowing in the eternal lamplight reflected by the gold and precious stones,—something so horrific in the three grim skulls, protruding themselves from amidst the jewels with which they are encircled, for each one, ‘The likeness of a kingly crown has on,’ and the whole scene is at once so ghastly, and so gorgeous, that, for the moment, one is almost tempted to believe some real sanctity must be attached to the relics, which princes and prelates have for ages agreed to honour with such extravagant and strange devotion” (Trollope, Belgium and Western Germany in 1833, 1:127). See also Ruskinʼs reference in The Poetry of Architecture (1837–38) (“A Chapter on Chimneys” [art. I, no. 2, v.]) to these relics being made more “ghastly” by their adornment with jewels “than if their brown bones had been left in peace” as an analogy for architectsʼ attempting to make “what is a disagreeable object in itself” appear “relieved or concealed by lavish ornament” (Ruskin, Works, 1:56).

“[D]eparted from Cologne . . . to trace the mighty Rhine to his source among the Rhetian Alps” (MS IX; Works [1903])—In imagination, the narrator casts forward to the farthest limits of the Rhine journey, to the riverʼs Alpine source. Rhaetia is an ancient name for a province of the Roman Empire that was bounded on the south by a broad arc of the Alps. In 1833, the Penny Cyclopædia defined the Rhaetian Alps as extending “from the sources of the Rhine to the Dreyherrn‐Spitz [Dreiherrenspitze], east of the valley of the Adige, about 80 miles”, and including five major passes with good carriage roads at that time, from the San Bernardino to the Brenner (Penny Cyclopædia, 1:388–89). Ruskin was probably thinking of the western segment of this arc, which lay in the eastern cantons of modern Switzerland; and among the sources of the Rhine, he probably had in mind the Hinterrhein, a tributary that flows through the valley of the Rheinwald in the Swiss canton of Graubünden (Grisons). (William Brockedon refers to the Grisons as “modern Rhætia” in Illustrations of the Passes of the Alps [“The Passes of the Bernardin and the Splugen”, 15].)

The Hinterrhein flows through the dramatic gorge, the Via Mala, before joining another principal tributary, the Vorderrhein, near Chur (Coire), where the river first takes on the name of the Rhine, thence flowing north toward Lake Constance. Ruskin, approaching from the north, learned to regard the Rhine Falls below Konstanz, near Schaffhausen, as the gateway to the Alps. In 1833, the family proceeded south through the Via Mala, and turned aside from the Hinterrhein to enter Italy via the Splügen Pass, descending to Chiavenna and Lake Como. Had they continued westward along the Hinterrhein through the Rheinwald, instead of taking the Splügen Pass, they would have entered Italy through the San Bernardino Pass, and descended to Bellinzona and Lake Maggiore. For the cluster of sections of the “Account” that Ruskin intended to represent the passage via the Splügen, see the glosses to “Passing the Alps”. See also Ruskinʼs Knowledge of the Alps.

Blank space on page for possible drawing (MS IX)—While it is impossible to prove intention about a space left on a page following the end of a piece of writing, the vertical column at the bottom of this page, which measures approximately six lines of Ruskinʼs cursive copperplate script, certainly tempted him to insert drawings in other such available spaces in MS IX. Either he never produced such a drawing, however; or he did produce it, but it has been removed or lost.