Portrait of a Franciscan Friar

The museum can name this friar. He is Jan Neyen, also called Jan de Ney, born around 1568 and baptised a Protestant, who converted, joined the Franciscans and from 1607 was confessor to the Archdukes Albert and Isabella, the rulers of the southern Netherlands. Two years later he acted as their go-between in the negotiations with the Dutch Republic that ended in the Twelve Years' Truce, the pause in the war that Antwerp was still living through when this picture was painted around 1615. By then Neyen had been dead for three years, and Rubens took his features from an engraving. The book and the skull are attributes of Saint Francis, recalling the saint's meditations in the wilderness. The portrait came to Munich in 1806 from the Düsseldorf gallery.