Portrait of Frans Francken I

One of the most important painters of late 16th-century Antwerp, Frans Francken I studied with Frans Floris, and established a dynasty of painters which included his son, Frans Francken II. He was much admired by Rubens and his contemporaries, and his likeness was preserved by Sir Anthony van Dyck's etching in the "Iconography". The etching corresponds, in reverse, to the present painting, as well as with other versions generally considered to be workshop replicas of a lost portrait by Rubens himself (see the paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Musée Fabre, Montpellier).