Shortly before his arrival at Brussels in November 1634 the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand, younger brother of King Philip IV, was in command of the Spanish forces which defeated the Swedish and German Protestant armies at Nördlingen on 6 September 1634. Succeeding the Infanta Isabella as governor of the Spanish Netherlands, he made his triumphal entry into Antwerp on 17 April 1635. The city of Antwerp had commissioned Rubens to design the triumphal arches and stages which lined the streets for his Solemn Entry; a year later Rubens was officially named Peintre de l'Hostel de Son Altèze, the post he had previously held under the Archduke Albert and the Archduchess Isabella since his return from Italy. In 1636, in a letter to Philip IV, the Cardinal-Infante makes the first reference to the commission conferred on Rubens to have executed a series of pictures (made after his designs) to decorate the Torre de la Parada.

Rubens's equestrian portrait of the Cardinal-Infante in the Prado, which also depicts Ferdinand in armour, but in a somewhat different pose than in the present picture - his right hand raised resting on his baton and his left hand in front of him holding on to the reigns of his horse - is generally dated circa 1635, after the Battle of Nördlingen and around the time of his Entry as Governor of the Netherlands. Vlieghe suggests, however, that since the painting was still in Rubens's studio at the time of his death in 1640 it may have been commissioned shortly before that date, presumably from Philip IV. In dating the present picture Vlieghe (loc.cit., p.80) follows Burchard's suggestion that it is possible that the present picture was the official portrait of the new governor, painted by Rubens at or shortly after the time of his appointment as Ferdinand's court painter on 15 April 1636: 'The lively, rapid brushwork, the sharp and expressive highlights on the armour, and the dark, glowing tonality that pervades the whole are unmistakable signs of Rubens's ultima maniera.' Vlieghe also suggests a relationship between the pose here with Titian's Charles V with a Drawn Sword, a picture of which Rubens himself made a copy.

Vlieghe considers the present picture to be of higher pictorial quality than the other known versions, including the partly autograph painting at Sarasota (idem); 'Its superior quality compared to other versions of the same portrait type may suggest that this copy was destined for the Cardinal himself. It may, however, have been the editio princeps which was kept in Rubens's studio.'