Rubens, Alex the Great Visiting the Studio of Apelles      Zoffany, Chas Townley and his Friends

Rubens and Townley were both European collectors of antiquities. Rubens painting of Alexander the Great situates him in a contemporary seventeenth-century setting, complete with the type of paintings which Rubens collected and a view of the ‘Pantheon’ addition to his home. Likewise, Zoffany’s painting of Townley places the eighteenth-century collector within a set of such elite gentlemen who were continuing and expanding the purchase of antiquities, even though they themselves are no longer artists. He is shown in his London home, filled with the most important of his acquisitions.