Girl with a Fan

This is Rubens copying Titian, and the picture he copied no longer exists. Titian painted several versions of a young woman holding a fan. One survives in Dresden, but the museum here believes Rubens worked from another, now lost, and the only reason we know that painting existed is that Anthony van Dyck sketched it in the notebook he carried through Italy in the 1620s. Rubens painted his version around 1628 to 1630, when he was past 50 and at the height of his fame, which says something about how long Titian kept his hold on him. He did not simply reproduce the model. He brought the young woman closer to the viewer, so she fills more of the canvas and feels nearer, more alive than a copy strictly needed to be. It was a picture he kept. It was still in his house when he died, and from his estate it passed to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, whose collection formed the core of the gallery in Vienna.