Reproductie van een geschilderd portret van Jan Moretus I door Peter Paul Rubens before 1897

This reproduction captures Peter Paul Rubens' painted portrait of Jan Moretus I. Though the date of the original is unknown, it reflects the cultural and economic world of 17th-century Antwerp. Rubens, a leading figure in the Flemish Baroque style, became a court painter, a diplomat, and an intellectual. His career shows us how art served the elite in that period, shaping perceptions of power and status. The original portrait of Jan Moretus I, likely commissioned, suggests the sitter's social standing and connections. Antwerp was a center of printing, and the Moretus family ran a highly successful printing house. Rubens's portrait contributed to the self-fashioning of the sitter, linking him to the cultural cachet of art and solidifying his place within Antwerp’s social hierarchy. To understand this work more fully, one would need to look at the history of portraiture and the cultural economy of Antwerp to appreciate the social dimensions of artistic production.