Note (return) — Chapter VIII
Reading edition
After studying under two different artists, and becoming a master in the guild of St Luke, Rubens went to Italy in 1600, when he was a young man of three-and-twenty years of age. He was eight years absent, entering the service of the ducal sovereign of Mantua, being sent by him on a diplomatic mission to Madrid to Philip III, of Spain, visiting on his own account Rome, where he found the Carracci and Guido 22 at the height of their fame, Venice and Genoa, 'leaving portraits where he went.'