CIRCLE OF SIR PETER PAUL RUBENS | EMPEROR AUGUSTUS, BUST-LENGTH, WEARING A LAUREL CROWN, IN A PAINTED OVAL

Anonymous sale, New York, Christie's, 12 June 1981, lots 222-226 (as Circle of Marten de Vos).

K. Jonkcheere, Rubens. Portraits After Existing Prototypes, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XIX, vol. 4, London 2016, pp. 90-91, under cat. no. 22,

reproduced fig. 80 (as whereabouts unknown).

Several groups of bust-length portraits of Roman emperors have been connected to Rubens and his circle and have raised debate among art historians. While the series of eleven in the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, appears to be by Rubens, most of what survives are period copies rather than autograph works.¹ The following two paintings belong to a series of eighteen, the most complete extant set, that were auctioned at Christie’s in 1981 as “Circle of Marten de Vos.” Michael Jaffé argued in 1971 that the original series on which these are based was completed before Rubens’s trip to Italy in 1600.² Rubens depicted all of the Roman emperors, beginning with Julius Caesar and before the Year of the Five Emperors (192-193 A.D.), except for Lucius Verus, who ruled with Marcus Aurelius. The present paintings represent Augustus, the second in the series (II), and Commodus, the eighteenth and final Emperor in the series (XVIII). The Stuttgart portraits lack the Roman numerals indicating the order of Emperors, but most replica series include them.

Octavian, Julius Caesar’s adopted son, became known as Augustus when he became Emperor in 27 B.C. Rubens most likely relied on antique coins or on Hendrick Goltzius’s series of engraved rulers for this portrait, which cannot be based on an antique bust.

Marcus Aurelius Commodus Antoninus began his rule with his father, Marcus Aurelius, and identified with and dressed as Hercules, even requiring others to address him as such. Rubens portrayed him with the club and lion skin Hercules won during his labors, inspired by antique sculptures such as the famous one in the Musei Capitolini, Rome.

Both of these portraits adhere closely to the Stuttgart originals, in format, coloring, and modeling of the faces.

1. See K. Jonckheere in Literature, pp. 84-89.

2. M. Jaffé, “Rubens’s Roman Emperors,” in The Burlington Magazine vol. 113, no. 819, June 1971, p. 300.