La Dama delle Licnidi

In 1602 Rubens was in his mid-20s and in the service of Vincenzo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua. The duke wanted portraits of beautiful women for his collection, and the museum thinks this canvas was probably one of that series. Her popular name comes from the small flowers woven into her hair, lychnis, a meadow flower of the carnation family. Who she was is not known. One proposal, recorded by the museum, is the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, daughter of Philip II of Spain, who later became Rubens's patron and protector in the Southern Netherlands. In 2015 the portrait was among the paintings taken in a robbery at this museum, and it came back the following year. In the autumn of 2023 it was in Mantua again, shown at Palazzo Te in an exhibition on Rubens.