Self-portrait

The Self-Portrait (c. 1638-40) at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna is one of Rubens's last paintings — completed in the final two years of his life when gout was increasingly limiting his physical capacity — and represents his final authoritative statement of his own image. Throughout his career, Rubens had been acutely conscious of his social and artistic position: knighted by both Charles I and Philip IV, a trained diplomat who had negotiated peace between European powers, a painter whose workshop was the most productive in Europe, and a gentleman-scholar whose Antwerp house combined the studio and the salon. The self-portrait shows none of the painter's instruments of his trade; instead, Rubens presents himself as a cultivated man of the world — elegant, composed, in full command of his intelligence even as his body failed him. The Kunsthistorisches Museum's holding in Vienna gives this final self-image a Habsburg context appropriate to the artist who had served the Spanish branch of that dynasty throughout his career and whose greatest religious works were created for its devotional and political purposes.

The portrait demonstrates Rubens' confident late technique with warm, fluid brushwork. The direct gaze and dignified bearing convey the self-assurance of an artist who had achieved unprecedented fame and social status.

This late self-portrait from 1638, painted just two years before Rubens's death, has been well-preserved. The panel support remains stable. The characteristically loose brushwork of the late period has been respected in conservation, which has focused on surface cleaning and varnish maintenance.