He returned to Antwerp around 1615 where he worked as an assistant in the studio of Otto van Veen, one of the teachers of Peter Paul Rubens.

[4] Artus Wolffort was one of the artists who worked on the decorations for the Joyous Entry into Antwerp of the new governor of the Habsburg Netherlands Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635.

Wolffort regularly used themes and motifs of van Veen in these early works, which were executed in a proto-Baroque style.

This is obvious in the work Christ in the house of Simon the Pharisee (one version auctioned at Sotheby's 4 November 2009, London, lot 56, one version in the church of St. Martin, Bergues, and another in the New Gallery (Kassel) (now considered a copy)), which was originally considered a work by van Veen.

The composition itself is loosely based on Rubens' work of the same subject in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, but reversed.