Rubens face swap

Where this one comes from

Rubens painted this in Antwerp in 1623 because the Prince of Wales asked him to — the future Charles I collected painters and wanted one of the man himself. Rubens grumbled in a letter that sending his own likeness seemed rather vain, and sent it anyway. It has been in the English royal collection ever since. He was forty-six, ran the largest workshop in northern Europe, and was about to spend several years doing diplomacy between Madrid and London.

What is in the picture

A wide black hat tipped forward, a dark cloak, a white collar folded flat, and a reddish beard trimmed short. The background is a plain warm brown. It is a small picture and a deliberately restrained one: there is no easel, no palette, no coat of arms and nothing to indicate a trade at all, which is itself the claim — a gentleman who happens to paint, sent to a prince who needed to be addressed as an equal.

When people use it

For competence worn lightly. It suits an announcement that you have taken something on, and it is the correct picture for a person who is quietly good at more than one job.

How your face lands in it

A three-quarter head under a broad hat brim, lit softly from the left, with the brim casting a gentle shadow across the upper forehead. Very workable. The hat and the beard belong to the painting and remain, which settles the century before your photograph has done anything at all.

Portrait of the Artist — Peter Paul Rubens, 1623. Peter Paul Rubens died in 1640, so the painting has been in the public domain for centuries and the Google Art Project reproduction is published on that basis. Source

Also in: Paintings · Self-portraits · Baroque