Philip Rubens

Philip Rubens (/ˈruːbənz/; Dutch: [ˈrybəns]; 1574–1611), was a Flemish antiquarian, librarian, philologist and city administrator from the Habsburg Netherlands.

His parents had fled with their families from Antwerp in the Habsburg Netherlands to Cologne in 1568 because they feared persecution as Calvinists in their homeland.

The nobility in the Southern Netherlands at the time sided with the Reformation and Jan Rubens also converted to Calvinism.

In 1568, the Rubens family, with two boys and two girls, fled to Cologne because, as Calvinists, they feared persecution in their homeland during the harsh rule of the Duke of Alba, the Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands.

After Philip's father was appointed legal advisor to Anna of Saxony, the second wife of William the Silent, the Rubens family moved in 1570 to Siegen where her court was located.

This put heavy pressure on the family, which was only relieved when the professional ban was given up after the death of Anna of Saxony in 1577.

His brother Peter Paul painted two group portraits with Philip one including himself, Justus Lipsius, and Joannes Woverius and another one with Philip behind Peter Paul, and also featuring Galilei, Justus Lipsius, Guillaume Richardot on the far left with either Nicolaas Rockox or Juan Batiste Perez de Baron behind him.

The prints illustrate certain customs of the ancient Romans such as the way in which they draped their toga and their wives wore the double tunic.

[4] The Dutch classicist Hendrik Snakenburg quoted in his edition of the Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus' De rebus gestis Alexandri Magni (Delft and Leiden, 1724) the three chapters of the Electorum libri II in which Philip Rubens had corrected the surviving text of Rufus.

[1] The second work by Philip Rubens is entitled S.Asterii, episcopi Amaseae, Homiliae Graece et Latine nunc primum editae and was published posthumously in Antwerp in 1615.

The second part of the book begins with a selection of poems, letters and other occasional writings written by Philip Rubens in honor of friends, patrons and scholars.

Portrait of Philip Rubens by his brother, 1610
The Four Philosophers (Philip Rubens 2nd from left)
Portrait of Philip Rubens engraved by Cornelis Galle the Elder after design by Rubens