MASP

Besides being one of the most significant artists of the 17th century, Rubens carried out diplomatic and official political missions. During the Eighty Years’ War (1568-1648), in which the Calvinists of the United Provinces of the north of Holland fought against the heavy taxation of Catholic Spain and gained their independence, Rubens remained on the Catholic side. His family took up exile in Cologne, in present-day Germany, fleeing from the religious conflicts of that time. Perhaps this is why he sought to affirm, especially in art, a peaceful, humanist and universal language. He painted religious and mythological scenes, portraits and landscapes. After spending eight years in Italy studying ancient and Renaissance art, he founded his own studio in Antwerp and carried out artistic missions in Spain and in England, while also training artists such as Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) and Diego Velázquez (1599-1660). MASP’s artwork, Archduke Albert VII of Austria (1615-32), was commissioned by Albert VII (1559-1621) and formed a pair together with a painting of his wife, Infanta Isabella (1566-1633), the daughter of King Philip II of Spain (1527-1598). After serving as viceroy of Portugal from 1581 to 1585, and in 1595, the archduke governed the Netherlands until 1621, and managed to suspend the conflict during the last twelve years. Thanks to him, Rubens received his first public commissions and was appointed as painter of the Brussels court in 1609. There is no consensus about the authorship of this work, found in his studio after his death. Possibly, it was used as a model for replicas by his pupils.

— MASP Curatorial Team, 2020

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By Luciano Migliaccio
The sixth child of Maximilian II by Infanta Maria, sister of Philip II, the archduke Albert VII was born in 1559 in Vienna and died in Brussels, in 1621. Educated to follow the ecclesiastic career in the court of Philip II, Albert was ordained archbishop of Toledo in 1577. However, it was as diplomat and member of the military that Philip II sent him to Lisbon, between 1581 (or 1585) and 1595, as Portuguese viceroy. In 1598, prompted by the king, Albert left the clergy to marry Philip’s daughter, Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia. After the death of his brother Ernst, Albert was appointed governor of the Spanish Netherlands, with the mission to subjugate the rebellion in the United Provinces, involving nationalists and Protestants. He held this position from 1596 until his death. In 1598 he received, as Infanta Isabella’s dowry, cosovereignty in the Netherlands. Nonetheless, his control of these territories was restricted to the ten Catholic provinces in the south. After a lengthy war, Albert was led, in 1607, to negotiate an armistice that resulted in a 12-year truce beginning in 1609. It was, above all, during these years of relative peace that the archduke fostered the arts and nourished, in particular, a relationship with Rubens, whose career as an artist he followed with great interest. Otherwise, it was thanks to Albert VII, with the intermediation of Jean Richardot, that Rubens received his first public commission and was appointed court painter at Brussels, in 1609. Based on the Spanish origin of the portrait, Rooses identified it as a painting mentioned in a document of 1615. This document reveals that Rubens received 300 guilders to paint a pair of portraits of the archduke and archduchess Isabella, respectively. The two portraits were sent to Spain, to Don Rodrigo Calderon, count of Oliva and marquis of Siete Iglesias, killed in 1621. The portrait in the Masp’s Collection derives from the one, painted by Rubens c.1614-1615, forming a pair with a portrait of the archduchess, acquired in 1921 by the Kunsthistorisches Museum, of Vienna (Inv. 6344, 105 x 74 cm). These portraits were found in the painter’s studio after his death, which suggests they may have been used as modellos for further detailed reproductions. A replica of the archduke’s figure, regarded as autographic, is conserved in the collection Thyssen-Bornemisza. Unlike the case with the Masp’s portrait, where the subject is portrayed at full length, in the above-mentioned portraits the subjects are depicted at three-quarter length. However, the backdrop and the objects in the picture are identical to those featured in the Masp’s portrait, except for the pilaster painted on the latter. The reasons behind the typological differences possibly reside in the fact that the Masp’s portrait was destined for Spain, where this typology derived from Titian was the most common, as stated by Burchard in a letter of 1939, conserved in the museum archives. The portrait in the Masp’s Collection – Archduke Albert VII of Austria – was considered autographic by Rooses, Burchard, and Glück. However, contemporary critics tend to refute Rubens’s authorship (Muller 1989, p. 121; Jaffé 1989, n. 245); actually, the painting was published by Vlieghe (1972, p. 260) as a posthumous portrait of Albert painted by Gaspar de Crayer (1584-1669) between 1627 and 1632, and evidently informed by Rubens’s modello. It certainly seems plausible that Rubens would rather entrust his assistants at the atelier to paint versions of official portraits, even that of his sponsor, Albert VII, than work on autographic reproductions. Furthermore, the comparison between the canvas in Vienna and that in São Paulo supports the hypothesis of the latter being a nonautographic version. The question of autography and to what extent Rubens participated in the production of the portrait of Albert VII currently at the Masp will continue unanswered until a thorough cleaning allows experts to assess, with due accuracy, the formal and chromatic quality of this portrait, a quality certainly very high in treatment of carnation tints. Finally, it seems that a careful confrontation with the diverse known versions of this portrait is indispensable for a conclusive analysis.

— Luciano Migliaccio, 1998

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