FOLLOWER OF SIR PETER PAUL RUBENS

This painting is a copy after a lost original datable to circa 1598-1600. At least four further copies are known, all in a feigned oval and with the emperor's name inscribed along the lower edge (see K. Jonckheere, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard: XIX (4): Portraits after Existing Prototypes, London, 2016, under no. 31, figs. 123-125). Rubens probably based his portrait on coins and prints, particularly the chiaroscuro woodcut included in Hubert Goltzius' Lebendige Bilder gar nach aller Keysern (1557).