Detail of Mulay Ahmad by Rubens in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, June 2010

Mulay Ahmad
about 1609
Peter Paul Rubens, Flemish, 1577–1640

Dimensions: 99.7 x 71.5 cm (39 1/4 x 28 1/8 in.)

Medium or Technique: Oil on panel

Classification: Paintings
Type: Portrait - Single - Male

Accession Number: 40.2

This painting is a free copy after a lost portrait by Jan Cornelisz. Vermeyen (1500– 1559) that was probably in Rubens's own collection. Therefore, Mulay Ahmad had died many years before Rubens painted him. Though in fact a brutal leader, the Berber King of Tunis was for Rubens an idealized, exotic champion of Christianity whose image later served as a model for the Black King in several of Rubens's images of the Adoration of the Magi.

Text from: www.mfa.org/collections/object/mulay-ahmad-32728