Self-portrait with hat

By the mid-1620s Rubens had decided how he wanted to be seen. He wears a broad black hat, a dark suit and a gold chain, the dress of a gentleman rather than a man who works with his hands. There are no brushes and no easel, nothing to mark him as a painter at all. The wide hat does one more quiet job, keeping his receding hairline in shadow. This is one of three closely related versions of the same pose. One of the others hangs at Windsor, in the English royal collection, and a letter Rubens wrote in January 1625 helps place them in time.