This photo was chosen in 1982, at a Warhol exhibition held at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York, due to similarities observed between the two artists.On the cover Andy Warhol photographed in 1982 by Hans Namuth before a painting by Rubens: Reconciliation of Queen Marie de' Medici and Her Son Louis XIII (The Louvre, Paris).
Rubens was renowned in the 17th century for his celebrative portraits of famous people of the time, representations that reinforced their power and social status. Andy Warhol, with his Pop portraits, did the same thing. The New York art historian and critic Robert Rosenblum, in fact, called the American artist the Court Painter of the Sixties and Seventies. Moreover, the Flemish artist was always surrounded by a large group of assistants, just as Warhol was in his Factory.
For the first time in the history of art, in this incomplete cycle of twenty-four works of allegorical-eulogistic nature commissioned by Marie de’ Medici, Rubens represented, in sumptuous, impressive manner, facts that had really taken place, but inserted into an allegorical and mythological context. Andy Warhol did much the same thing, describing reality in a style taken from advertising, the new mythology and allegory of our own day.
(from Mito e allegoria dei tempi by Francesco Nuvolari).