Although Rubens did not know it, Antwerp received a fatal blow to her prosperity at the very moment he settled there. In the truce with Holland concluded in 1609, the Archduke Albert neglected to stipulate for the free navigation of the Scheldt; this enabled Amsterdam to develop her own commerce at the expense of her rival. The effects soon appeared. Seven years later, the English ambassador, Rubens’s friend, describes Antwerp as “_magna civitas, magna solitudo_, for in the whole time we spent there I could never set my eyes on the whole length of a street upon forty persons at once: I never saw coach nor saw man on horseback. In many places, grass grows in the streets, yet the buildings are all kept in reparation ... _splendida paupertas_, fair and miserable.” As if in compensation for the loss of her commercial supremacy, Antwerp saw the dawn of an art of which Rubens was the originator and most brilliant representative. The pupils of Rubens did not confine themselves to painting and ornamental design. They were often practical carvers also. Only a month before his death, Rubens wrote a testimonial for Louis Faydherbe, stating that this pupil had lived with him for three years and had made great progress in painting and carving, excelling especially in ivory carving. He therefore exhorts nobles and magistracies to encourage him to settle among them and embellish their dwellings with his works. Thus we see how the _style Rubens_ extended. [Illustration: PLATE XXIV.—_Interior, by Barthol van Bassen (Seventeenth Century)._ RIJKS MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM. Fig. 28: FLEMISH ANDIRON (Sixteenth Century); Fig. 29: DINANDERIE, double Candlestick; Fig. 30: DINANDERIE, single Candlestick. ] The universality of the _style Rubens_ in Western Europe for half a century is undeniable. This great genius was known and honoured in Italy: he was a favourite of the King of Spain and his brother, the Viceroy of the Netherlands; when he was not painting nor designing something, he took a rest by going to some foreign court on an embassy. On one of these, Charles I of England knighted him; Philip IV made him Secretary of the Privy Council. Pupils flocked to him as if his studio in Antwerp was the Mecca of art. He had scarcely established himself there when he wrote (1611): “On every side I am overwhelmed with solicitations: without the least exaggeration I may assure you that I have already had to refuse more than a hundred pupils.” Every kind of decoration and design was subject to his brush. The Flemish tapestry weavers pestered him for cartoons: the famous printer, Moretus, must have him design title-pages, borders and vignettes for the “_Imprimerie Plantin_”: chapel ceilings, cars for cavalcades and triumphal arches all came alike to him; Marie de’ Medici was not satisfied until he had immortalized her in grandiose canvases on the walls of her new palace.