Warhol had a joint exhibition with the German-born photographer Hans Namuth at New York’s Castelli Gallery in 1982. Namuth specialised in portraits and is most famous for his photographs of Jackson Pollock creating his iconic drip paintings. This portrait is part of his project to photograph the artists represented by Castelli. It shows Warhol standing in front of Rubens’s painting ‘Reconciliation of the Queen and her Son’, which was part of his Marie de Medici Cycle. Rubens was famous for painting the celebrities of his day, providing them with an image to bolster their power. Warhol did the same with his pop portraits, indeed Robert Rosenblum described him as “an ideal court painter”. Rubens also employed a large studio of assistants which is paralleled in Warhol’s Factory.