Peter Paul Rubens was a colourful character. Just drop into the Flemish master's old house in Antwerp - as I did last weekend - and you'll see what I mean. Artist, entrepreneur and diplomat, he founded a "school" of apprentices to turn out paintings on an almost industrial basis (just like Damien Hirst) and married a vivacious 16-year-old when he was 52. His life was almost as baroque as his work.
He was also something of a snappy dresser. Rubens considered himself a professional rather than a bohemian, and he dressed accordingly. The southern Low Countries were ruled by the Spanish at the time, and this influenced fashion. Men wore dark, close-fitting doublets and a contrasting white ruff - a wheel of pleated cloth that looks very odd today but was all the rage at the time. 
As well as preventing the doublet from becoming soiled at the neckline, it forced the chin up, conferring a dignified appearance.
The folds of these ruffs became so complicated that they were often supported by a scaffolding
of thin wire called a supportasse. The wire was abandoned after the discovery of starch - and as time wore on the ruff became more streamlined. Eventually it lost its stiffness and drooped to the shoulders, looking less vulture and more Saturday Night Fever.
Ruff or no ruff, with his pointy beard and piercing gaze, Rubens had the effortless style of a man with a heightened visual sense. His beautiful Italian-influenced palazzo adds to that impression: as does his orderly garden, with its wooden lattice structures and tended plots. Last Sunday, in soft autumn sunlight, it was full of rust, brown and ochre shades, faintly melancholy and yet deeply pleasurable. Much like gazing at one of his paintings.
