Equestrian portrait of Anton Giulio Brignole-Sale

In 1626 a young Genoese named Anton Giulio Brignole-Sale inherited a marquisate and was formally enrolled among the city's aristocracy. He was barely 22, and the next year he had Van Dyck paint him like a warrior general, mounted and rearing before a wall of grand architecture, all of it announcing a rank he had just acquired. Van Dyck had borrowed the swagger of this format from Rubens, whose equestrian portraits he knew well. This was his last year in Genoa. He was paid 747 lire for this and two other family portraits before moving on. The picture still hangs in the Palazzo Rosso beside the companion portrait of his wife, Paolina Adorno.