After the death of Governess Isabella in 1633 the Southern Netherlands were again reigned by Spain. Don Ferdinand, brother of Philip IV was appointed new Governor and entered Antwerp on 17 April 1635. For this occasion Rubens was asked to deliver decorations, and with others Theodor van Thulden was commissioned to execute these after Rubens' designs. The magistrates later asked Van Thulden to make a series of prints to commemorate the decorations in a book, published in 1642.
One of the main decorations, 'Mercury departing from Antwerp', was painted by Van Thulden after Rubens' oilsketch, now in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg (Martin, op.cit., no. 461, fig. 93). The picture was destroyed in a fire in 1731, but is shown on Teniers' picture of the Gallery of the Archduke, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Van Thulden engraved the subject twice, but probably due to the well-known composition, not in reverse. Martin (op.cit.) described the present lot, which is in reverse to the artist's original decoration, as a reversed copy.
In the catalogue of the Amsterdam exhibition, where the present lot was exhibited as by Van Thulden, is described that J. Richard Judson pointed out that it would seem possible that Van Thulden made a smaller oilstudy of the subject preliminary to the engraver's drawing, in reverse to the original decoration. One of the engravings (Holl. 133, Martin 47) is of the same dimensions and in reverse to the present lot, on which it could well be based