Ruben's Self-Portrait in Focus

Peter Paul Rubens
Born June 29 1577, Siegen, Westphalia (Germany) — died May 30 1640, Antwerp, Flanders (Belgium)

Peter Paul Rubens was arguably the most important Baroque artist working in Europe in the seventeenth century. He was also a successful courtier and diplomat who represented the Spanish Netherlands in the courts of Europe from 1620 to 1633. In recognition of his years of diplomatic service, he received an M.A. from Cambridge, and knighthoods from Charles 1 of England and Philip IV of Spain.

In 1623 the forty-five-year-old artist painted two self-portraits. One, on panel, was sent on request to Charles, Prince of Wales (later Charles 1 of England). This portrait was also intended as a kind of demonstration piece that Rubens hoped would lead to a major commission to decorate the ceiling of the Banqueting Hall in the new royal palace at Whitehall. The second self-portrait, which is now in the Australian National Gallery, was made for Rubens's friend, the scholar and lawyer Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580–1637). These almost identical images were Rubens's first self-portraits, although he had previously included his own likeness in some family portraits and a number of other paintings. Later, in his final years, he painted the famous self-portrait that now hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Unlike Rembrandt, Rubens rarely used the self-portrait as a subject for his paintings.

In the self-portrait belonging to the Australian National Gallery, Rubens has painted himself in full court dress to emphasize his status as a gentleman of Antwerp. In 1609, following eight years in Italy, he had been appointed court painter to the Archduke Albert and the Archduchess Isabella, rulers of the Spanish Netherlands, and the gold chain visible below his throat is a symbol of that office. His fashionable black cloak and hat intensify the liveliness of the artist's face. Glistening eyes, a swirling beard and a flourishing moustache have been painted with a masterly touch. In characterizing himself, Rubens has succeeded admirably in portraying the 'intelligence of glance' that he told Peiresc was the aim of a good portrait. The portrait served as a model for an engraving made in 1630 by Paulus Pontius, an engraver who had worked for Rubens in his studio since 1623, to celebrate Rubens's diplomatic success as a secretary to Philip IV's Privy Council. It seems that in selecting this likeness to popularize his image, Rubens was presenting himself as a courtier rather than a painter.

It was probably during his stay in Paris in February 1622 that Rubens committed himself to painting this self-portrait for his friend Peiresc. Peiresc had been acting as Rubens's representative in negotiations over the commission of a series of paintings commemorating the life of Marie de Médicis, a series which is now displayed in the Louvre. His weekly correspondence with the painter was also based on a shared love of antiquities, especially Roman cameos and intaglios. The two men corresponded for the next four years about a joint undertaking to produce a scholarly illustrated book on the marvels of antique gem-cutting. Although the publication never materialized, Rubens's commitment to the project is documented by his own drawings of cameos and the dozen engravings he commissioned his engravers, Vorsterman and Pontius, to make for the book. During Rubens's visit to Paris, he and Peiresc visited and discussed that city's most esteemed collections. Peiresc showed Rubens the fabulous first-century A.D. Roman cameo, the Gemma Tiberiana, which he had discovered in Sainte-Chapelle, and Rubens agreed to paint a copy of the large imperial agate.

Peiresc wanted Rubens's Self-portrait to hang in the study of his house in Aix-en-Provence, France, above his book cases. The painting was intended to form part of a 'famous men' portrait series that included such illustrious European scholars as Pope Urban Vlll, Malherbe, Nostradamus and Galileo, many of whom were also friends of Peiresc. The ninety portraits which this Provençal lawyer had collected mirrored his diverse scientific, literary and historical interests, and Rubens's Self-portrait stands out as the only image of a painter. In fact, it was Rubens's qualities as an antiquarian scholar and a diplomat that had earned him his place in this collection.

During his visit to Paris in 1622 Rubens signed a prestigious contract to paint two series depicting scenes from the life of Marie de Médicis and her late husband Henry IV to decorate two galleries of the Royal Luxembourg Palace in Paris. Rubens wrote in September 1621, 'l confess that I am, by natural instinct, better fitted to execute large works than small curiosities. . . my talent is such that no undertaking, however vast in size or diversified in subject, has ever surpassed my courage'. The artist gained his supremacy in European art through his ability to paint large and complex subjects with a verve and energy that astonished his patrons. He perfected the genre of historical paintings by investing them, and particularly their royal subjects, with a glory and majesty that belied the challenge of parliament to their rule. The images of ancient Roman authority that he had earlier instilled into his antique tapestry suites was ingeniously adapted to different contemporary contexts in a number of series that glorified various European monarchs. These dazzling public relations campaigns for the courts of Paris, London and Brussels were only matched by Rubens's persuasive affirmations of the power of the Catholic church.

The Rubens sketch acquired by the Gallery in 1988 was the first study for the central scene in the series representing the life of Henry IV. Entitled The Triumphal Entry of Henry IV into Paris 22 May 1594, the finished work was conceived as one of twenty-four paintings that portrayed Henry's life. Henry IV ruled France from 1589 until his assassination in 1610. A decisive man of action, Henry brilliantly reconquered his divided kingdom, brought peace between the warring Protestant and Catholic factions and re-established stability and prosperity in France.

The Gallery's study for The Triumphal Entry of Henry IV was Rubens's first oil sketch for this major painting, and as such illuminates the genesis of one of his most important commissions. It is a rare example of the artist's first 'scribble pad' phase of a work, where he quickly brushed in his first thoughts for a composition and then secured the image with touches of colour. Rubens made the oil sketch the basis of his picture making. Drawing directly in paint, he used the sketch both as a primary means of visualizing ideas and as an accessible template to be scaled up by assistants into a final painting. The spontaneous shorthand of the sketch offers valuable insights into the artist's thinking processes. In this sketch, for instance, it is possible to see how Rubens changed his mind as he painted: in the far left bottom corner of the sketch two alternative body positions — one flying, one seated — have been outlined for a figure.

Rubens's contract for the series on Henry IV stated that the French king's victories should be depicted in the fashion of antique Roman triumphs. In his own lifetime Henry had often been portrayed as a new Caesar. Rubens had a repertoire of precedents to draw upon, and the final composition of The Triumphal Entry of Henry IV was inspired by a rich range of visual sources that reflected the artist's gift for exploiting and synthesizing his artistic inheritance.

As a young painter at the Gonzaga court in Mantua, Rubens had admired, and later copied, the Italian Renaissance painter Andrea Mantegna's The Triumph of Caesar, c.1480s. Inspired by antique Roman works, this series of nine canvases showed a procession of soldiers set against a grid of standards and trophies. Rubens also admired the Mannerist ideas in Giulio Romano's The Triumph of Scipio, 1533–34, and Polidoro da Caravaggio's Soldiers destroying a bridge, c.1525, as well as such princely ornaments as the fourth-century A.D. Roman cameo The Triumph of Licinius. In 1625 he drew and made an engraving of this carved antique gemstone for a publication that he and Peiresc were preparing on Europe's most beautiful antique cameos.

It was from the Licinius cameo that Rubens took the confrontational arrangement of horses and fallen foes that forms the basis of the central grouping in the Gallery's sketch. However, in placing Henry on a horse rather than in a chariot, Rubens was also drawing on equestrian images from his own recent works, The Triumph of the Eucharist, 1624 — destined to be woven and dispatched to Spain in 1628 — and the equestrian portrait of the Duke of Buckingham, painted in 1625. Rubens's patron, Marie de Médicis, would have been pleased that this portrayal of Henry also made reference to the monumental bronze equestrian statue of her late husband that had been cast by Pietro Tacca and recently installed in Paris.

The survival of the Gallery's sketch, as well as that of three later studies, testifies to the artist's efforts to reach a satisfactory composition. In the later studies, now in The Wallace Collection, London, the Musée Bonnat, Bayonne, and The Metropolitan Museum, New York, the centrifugal intricacy of the first sketch was streamlined into a monumental linear presentation that was retained for the final painting,

The Gallery's sketch represents Rubens's first ideas for the composition of The Triumph of Henry IV. Apart from the door lintel in the bottom left corner — a given feature in the room where the picture was to hang — the forms in this sketch were freely changed in the later studies. For example, in the first sketch, Henry IV is mounted on a horse and carries a general's baton; in the later studies he is placed in a chariot and re-armed with a victor's palm, and then with the olive branch of peace. The winged female figure striding beside the mounted king in the first sketch was inspired by her counterpart in the Licinius cameo. According to the convention Mantegna adopted from classical sources, Rubens turreted her crown to represent a city, and he equipped her with a ship's standard to symbolize Paris (the city that rocks but never sinks). This winged lady survives briefly in both the Wallace and the Musée Bonnat sketches as the horse's groom, although in these studies her pose is inspired by the bull handler which Rubens borrowed from Mantegna's The Triumph of Caesar. In the Metropolitan Museum sketch her place in the procession is filled by the twisting back of a male trophy bearer, who, in embryonic form, led the procession in the first sketch. The standard is moved forward in the Musée Bonnat sketch before being completely abandoned.

In the final painting, now in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Rubens revives the group of flying figures which had only previously appeared in the Gallery's sketch. The figures are personifications of Victory crowning Henry IV, and Fame, with the two trumpets, supporting History with a torch. Rubens obviously could not resist the excitement of these boldly foreshortened ladies hovering above Henry's head, even if they did distract from the linear momentum of the procession. He balanced the composition by reintroducing the quadriga, which he placed, as in Roman coins, on top of the Triumphal Arch. The chariot is flanked by evocations of the Dioscuri brothers, victorious antique horse-tamers.

Rubens's relatively laboured evolution of this composition was probably partly the result of Cardinal Richelieu's Machiavellian efforts to dispense with his services. As the First Minister of France, Richelieu disliked the fact that Rubens was also acting as diplomatic representative for the Spanish Netherlands, France's enemy at that time. The Cardinal's decision to lower the ceilings of the gallery, thus destroying Rubens's composition, caused the painter to abandon his struggle to complete the series. However, although reasons of state interfered with the completion of this commission, they did not prevent the Cardinal purchasing many of the artist's works for his own collection. Rubens did use the composition at a later time for one of the arches — The Triumph of Ferdinand after the Battle of Nordlingen — that he designed for the triumphal entry of the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand into Antwerp on 17 April 1635. It must have given the artist some satisfaction to see his labours for the ungrateful French court being used to glorify their Spanish rival.

A good introduction to the artist's life and work is Christopher White's Peter Paul Rubens: Man and Artist (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1987).

For more information about Rubens's Self-portrait see Michael Jaffé, 'Rubens to Himself: The Portraits Sent to Charles I and to N-C. Fabri de Peiresc', in Rubens e Firenze, edited by Mina Gregori (Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1983) pp.19–32; David Jaffé, 'The First Owner of the Canberra Rubens, Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580–1637) and His Picture Collection', Australian Journal of Art, 5 (1986): pp.23–45; and Hans Vlieghe, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, Part XIX, Portraits Il (Rubens Portraits of Identified Sitters Painted in Antwerp) (New York: Harvey Miller Publishers and Oxford University Press, 1987); David Jaffé, Rubens' Self-portrait in Focus (Brisbane: Boolarong Publications, 1988).

Julius S. Held's 'New Oil Sketches by Peter Paul Rubens', in the Burlington Magazine, CXXIX, no.1014 (September 1987): pp.572–83, provides further background material on the oil sketch of Henry IV.