(Siegen 1577–1640 Antwerp)
A portrait of the artist,
oil on panel, 67.2 x 56.8 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Belgium

Exhibited:
Antwerp, Rubenshuis, 1 September 2014 – 29 June 2015 and 18 April – 21 November 2017

We are grateful to Ben van Beneden for his help in cataloguing this lot.

The present panel is a close painterly copy of the self-portrait sent by Rubens to Charles I, signed and dated 1623, conserved in the Royal Collection, London (inv no. 40056).

A workshop copy of that panel was recorded as having been sent to Rubens’s friend de Peiresc in 1631. This suggests that after the original autograph composition was sent to Charles I, other versions remained in Rubens’s workshop, of which the current panel is one.

Rubens is portrayed here as in the Royal Collection picture, as a courtier and diplomat, in fashionable understated black clothing and with a barely visible gold chain, one of several he received from different sovereigns. In the background a rock and reddening sky are visible, which in Latin would be described as Petrus et caelum rubens, and erudite play on the artist’s own name, and in keeping with Rubens’s persona as a classically educated humanist artist, or pictor doctus.

Infrared reflectography of the present picture reveals pentimenti in the positioning of the hat worn by Rubens. X-rays further reveal a portrait of a woman on the panel underneath the visible paint layers. Both these characteristics further locate the picture within Rubens’s workshop practice, where changes were frequently made to compositions and panels and canvases re-used.

A dendrochronological report suggests a creation date for the panel of 1590 onwards.