BY KIRSTEN BENGTSON-LYKOUDIS

It might come as a surprise to anyone who has never visited Florida’s West Coast to learn from art historian Aaron H. De Groft, that “the only large painting cycle by Peter Paul Rubens outside of Europe” is housed not at a place like the Met or the Getty, but at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in the beachfront town of Sarasota. Ringling’s sprawling Mediterranean compound- which includes a palatial art museum, his former winter residence, and a small museum devoted to his famous circus, contains one of the largest collections of Old Masters paintings in the country.

Mr. Ringling set out to establish himself as a man of culture using wealth accumulated from the circus and timely investments in railroads and oil. Under the guidance of his art advisor Julius Böhler, he purchased four of the five massive Rubens canvases on display from the second Duke of Westminster, during a trip to England in the 1920’s. Ringling also bought two tapestries from the Flemish master’s Triumph of the Eucharist series for his museum, then yet to be constructed. Several smaller Rubens works were later added. The fifth large painting from the series was acquired by the museum in 1980.

One of the most notable items from this series of works is their fascinating provenance, whose eventful history in the museum brochure reads like a script from The Red Violin. Ringling’s prized purchases were merely tokens of gratitude when they were initially created, as part of a lucrative commission for Rubens’ patron the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, governor of the Netherlands and a daughter of the Spanish King Phillip II. The Ringling works were part of a group of eleven vivid Biblical scenes in oil, which were to be used as ‘cartoon’ patterns for tapestries to be hung in a Franciscan convent.

Oddly enough, tapestries, woven by Dutch masters such as Jan Raes and Jan Franz van den Hecke, were considered more valuable than the paintings at the time. The tapestries were eventually sent to the Royal Discalced Barefoot Nuns convent in Madrid, where they remain to this day. The paintings themselves were completed between 1626-28, and sent to the royal palace in Brussels as a gift from Rubens to Isabella. When a fire destroyed the Brussels palace in 1731, only a small group of the cartoon paintings that had been fortuitously moved to Spain during the Napoleonic wars survived.

When looking at these works, Rubens’ devout Catholicism becomes clear. He tackled this project with gusto during a time in which the tenets of his faith had been severely tested by the Protestant Reformation. His dramatic, vibrantly-colored series of Eucharist-related tableaus consisted of sweeping scenes of the Apostles, Catholic Saints, defenders of the Church, allegorical figures and Old Testament Israelites receiving Manna from Heaven. These rich and imposing works emphasized the Catholic belief that the wine and bread consumed during communion took on the actual physical manifestation of the blood and body of Christ. By illustrating one of the most bitterly debated issues dividing Protestants from Catholics, Rubens’ Triumph of the Eucharist cartoons became prime examples of ‘Anti-Reformation Art’, designed to lure those who had strayed back to the Catholic Church.

As the Protestant movement asserted itself under the reforms of Martin Luther, Rubens’ paintings provided a rich and reactive counterpart filled with Biblical allegories that illustrated the Eucharist for the vast segments of populace who could neither read or write. Like the Medieval stain glass windows adorning the illustrious cathedrals of Europe, the series provided visual propaganda for the Church’s power elite and the royal houses of Europe with whom they were so closely aligned. In addition to the paintings and the subsequent tapestries, a series of reverse etchings were mass-produced for those without access to larger works.

The surviving Rubens’ cartoons were acquired in 1818 by the Duke of Westminster to add grandeur to his impressive personal art collection and remained in England until John Ringling purchased them from his descendents in 1926. As if they had been commissioned anew with his museum in mind, Mr. Ringling designed the building around the Rubens’ paintings, creating an imposing space near the entrance that would awe his visitors with their scale and intensity. Shedding the political and religious agendas of their past, the works were to take on a new meaning when they were shipped to Florida; to provide testimony to the wealth and prestige of their new owner.

As oil and railroad tycoons and successful investors created a new aristocracy in the U.S., the acquisition of valuable works of art provided a way for the newly moneyed to demonstrate their elevated status in society while making their owners appear tasteful and erudite. Having been impressed by the Duke of Westminster’s imposing galleries at the Grosvenor House in England, Ringling incorporated elements of these rooms into his own galleries, building cathedral ceilings with clerestory windows to light the works from above, hanging the works in the same order as the Duke and his family had done, and going a step further by using the same woodcarvers who created ornamentation for his circus wagons, to adorn the walls with elaborate Solomic columns and intricate architectural details mirroring elements in the paintings themselves.

Ringling’s loss of fortune during the Depression eventually left his art collection and the museum in the hands of the state. While the Ringling Museum navigates its survival during these difficult economic times in an area where the real estate crisis has been particularly devastating, one cannot help but make a connection between the shifting fates of the wealthy and powerful both present and past. A Christmas auction of precious jewelry, artwork and antique furniture being sold by desperate victims of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme that took place at a nearby Ritz Carlton makes one wonder if these fabulous paintings will reside permanently in Florida, or where they might turn up next.

Kirsten Bengtson-Lykoudis is a freelance writer, artist and gallerist who has taught at the Ringling College of Art and Design and at USF in Tampa.  She is a former Associate Director of the Edwynn Houk Gallery, has worked as a freelance Exhibitions Editor for Focus Magazine and currently writes for ArtSlant and OMNP. She lives and works in New York.