Autorretrato en un círculo de amigos en Mantua

Rubens was in his mid-twenties and working for the Duke of Mantua when he painted himself into this tight group of friends, around 1602. He looks out at us from the back, his older brother Philip just in front of him, and around them a circle of learned men he had come to know in Italy. It is an imagined gathering rather than a real meeting. Rubens wanted to be seen not simply as a painter for hire but as an educated man among scholars. One of the faces has been proposed as the young Galileo, whom Rubens knew during his Italian years. He paints himself holding no brush and no palette, dressed like the gentlemen around him.