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Rubens cherished his status as a gentleman that artistic fame and prestige brought him, and during the 1620s developed a significant role in international politics during the Thirty Years' War. The Archduchess Isabella trusted Rubens and appreciated his integrity, cultivated demeanour and social skills (Rubens was also fluent in five languages). In 1623 she involved him in the search for a diplomatic solution to the conflict which had resumed between Spain and the Northern Netherlands. Rubens believed passionately in the cause of European peace, and travelled on secret missions to the Northern Netherlands and official diplomatic visits to the courts of England and Spain, where he met and worked with the Spanish painter Velazquez. Although he helped to bring about political agreement between England and Spain (he was knighted by both Charles I and Philip IV), Rubens eventually became disillusioned, snubbed by aristocratic courtiers and unconvinced about his usefulness as an ambassador for peace, and returned to Antwerp and family life at the beginning of the 1630s.
Rubens' second wife, Helene Fourment, only 16 when they married in 1630, was a source of inspiration to Rubens in the last ten years of his life. She appeared in many of his later mythological scenes, including The Three Graces, and some amazingly intimate and affectionate portraits such as Helene Fourment in a Fur Wrap. Another artistic stimulus for Rubens was the landscape around his country estate, Het Steen, in the Brabant countryside. Rubens painted here very much for his own pleasure, rather than to promote his artistic career. Painting of rural scenes was very much a part of the artistic heritage of the Netherlands; Rubens' sensitive and technically brilliant landscape paintings of the 1630s foreshadowed the work of later landscape artists, particularly Gainsborough and Constable.
Rubens died in 1640, one the most celebrated, versatile high achievers in Northern Europe. His output had been enormous, and all-encompassing in subject matter. His epitaph reads: "Peter Paul Rubens, knight…Lord of Steen, who, among the other gifts by which he marvellously excelled in the knowledge of ancient history and all other useful and elegant arts, deserved to called the Apelles, not only of his own age but of all time, and made himself a pathway to the friendship of kings and princes."
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