Rubens (1577–1640) did not instantly develop a preference for portraiture. Yet he succeeded, as none other, in endowing his likenesses with an almost palpable sense of immediacy, and was to become one of the greatest portraitists of all time. Nearly four hundred years after they were painted or drawn, Rubens’s family portraits are still full of life. This book is the first ever dedicated to the private work of the most public painter of the seventeenth century, re-examining the works´ functions and meanings, and reconsidering them in the context of the master’s life and his social and artistic concerns.