Philip the Handsome

For a long time this man in armour was taken for Emperor Maximilian I. The Kunsthistorisches Museum now identifies him as Maximilian's son, Philip the Handsome, Duke of Burgundy, whose marriage to Joanna of Castile brought the Spanish crowns into the Habsburg family. The crown fixed to his helmet is a king's crown, and Philip became King of Castile through that marriage. The gold St Andrew's cross on his breastplate entered his arms after it. The face also lacks the hooked nose that everyone knew from Maximilian's portraits.

Rubens painted him around 1618, more than a century after Philip died in 1506, and dressed him in armour of the kind worn around 1500. The Southern Netherlands, where Rubens worked, were then ruled by the Archdukes Albert and Isabella, and Isabella was Philip's great-granddaughter. The oak panel probably stayed in Rubens's estate, later hung in Prince Eugene of Savoy's city palace in Vienna, and has been recorded in the imperial picture gallery since 1772.