Born in Siegen, Westphalia in 1577, Peter Paul Rubens was one of the most celebrated painters of seventeenth century Northern Europe. Famed for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and heavily allegorical subjects, his exuberant Baroque style, emphasizing movement, color, and sensuality, won him many admirers among the European elite. He also worked as a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and even a diplomat, knighted by both Philip IV of Spain and Charles I of England.

Though he moved around Europe frequently during his lifetime, many of Rubens' years were spent in Antwerp, where he enjoyed financing from the court and kept a large and successful studio. In 1635, the aging Rubens was given the task of designing the street decorations for the ceremonial entry into the city of the Ferdinand of Austria, the new governor of the Spanish Netherlands. After his death in 1640, these designs were published in the 1642 Pompa Introitus Ferdinandi, comprised of etchings made by Theodor van Thulden from Rubens’ work.