Portrait of Archduke Albert of Austria

This canvas and its companion were made around 1615 for Don Rodrigo Calderón, marqués de Siete Iglesias, one of the most powerful men at the Spanish court and a keen buyer of Rubens. What he hung on his wall were the two rulers of the Spanish Netherlands, Archduke Albert here and his wife the Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia in the matching picture. Behind the archduke, past a balustrade, the ground opens onto the meadows of the Voer with the castle of Tervuren beyond, one of the residences he governed from, and Jan Brueghel painted that distance. Calderón lost the king's favour, was tried and was executed in Madrid in 1621. The pair then passed to Felipe IV.