Old Master Painting After Peter Paul Rubens "Self Portrait With Hat." A fine early oil on canvas of Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish 1577-1640) Self portrait painted in 1623 that is part of the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle. Old labels on the stretcher. 

Overall: 38 1/2 X 33 in. 

Sight: 29 1/4 X 24 1/4 in. 

Depth: 2 1/2 in. 

#2676 . 

Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish artist and diplomat. He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque tradition. Rubens’s highly charged compositions reference erudite aspects of classical and Christian history. His unique and immensely popular Baroque style emphasized movement, color, and sensuality, which followed the immediate, dramatic artistic style promoted in the Counter-Reformation. His legacy is the stylistic reference of “Rubenesque,” which describes plump and fleshy figures, mostly women. Rubens produced altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects, and was also a prolific designer of cartoons for the Flemish tapestry workshops and of frontispieces for the publishers in Antwerp. He was born June 28th, 1577 in Siegen, Germany to parents who were Calvinist refugees from Antwerp in the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium), and moved to Antwerp only at about 12. In addition to running a large workshop in Antwerp that produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically educated Humanist scholar and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV of Spain and Charles I of England. His commissioned works were mostly history paintings, which included religious and mythological subjects, and hunt scenes. He painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house. He wrote a book with illustrations of the palaces in Genoa, which was published in 1622 as Palazzi di Genova and was influential in spreading the Genoese palace style throughout Northern Europe. He was one of the last major artists to make consistent use of wooden panels as a support medium, even for very large works, but he used canvas as well, especially when the work needed to be sent a long distance. For altarpieces he sometimes painted on slate to reduce reflection problems. Rubens died from heart failure as a result of his chronic gout on May 30th, 1640. The remains of Rubens’s second wife Helena Fourment and two of her children (one of whom was fathered by Rubens) were later laid to rest in the same chapel as he was, which he designed himself. Over the following centuries about 80 descendants from the Rubens family were interred in the chapel. His numerous pupils include Anthony van Dyck, Abraham van Diepenbeeck, Peter van Mol, and Theodoor van Thulden, to name just a few, and his most frequent collaborator was Jan Brueghel the Younger. He is also one of the most valued “Old Masters” in today’s art market.