Portrait of a Genoese Gentleman (?), Aged Forty-Two

For a long time this man was called Livio Odescalchi, a nephew of Pope Innocent XI, which cannot be right. Odescalchi was born in 1652, 11 years after van Dyck died. The Louvre now calls him a Genoese gentleman, with a question mark, aged 42. The age and date come from a closely related picture in a private collection in Italy, which carries a coat of arms, the sitter's age and the date 1626. In those years the painter worked for long stretches in Genoa for its patrician families, and the portrait has that Genoese air, the stiff white ruff, the helmet set down on the table. The Louvre still lists it under van Dyck, yet describes it as a copy or a version with small changes of the Italian picture, and the 2004 catalogue of his paintings includes neither. It hangs in Room 714 with the rest of the collector Carlos de Beistegui's gift.