The Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia

This portrait was painted around 1615 by two of Antwerp's biggest names sharing one canvas. Rubens did the woman; Jan Brueghel the Elder, famous for his jewel-like landscapes, did the setting around her. The sitter is Isabel Clara Eugenia, daughter of Philip II of Spain, and by now she and her husband, Archduke Albert, ruled the Spanish Netherlands as joint sovereigns from Brussels. Both painters worked for that court, and a picture like this was part of the work: it advertised the splendour of the rulers who paid them. It has a companion, a matching portrait of Albert, so the two would have hung side by side as husband and wife. These were the years of the Twelve Years' Truce, a rare pause in the long war with the Dutch Republic to the north. Albert died in 1621, and Isabel governed on alone, later taking the plain habit of a Franciscan nun.