Portrait of a Young Woman

Rubens was still a young man abroad when he painted this, in his mid-20s and working in Italy for Vincenzo Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua. Part of his job was to copy famous pictures and to paint portraits of beautiful aristocratic women for the duke's private gallery of beauties. This head of an unknown young woman may belong to that commission, around 1603. It was never finished, which is part of its interest; you can watch how Rubens built a face, the features brought up out of a thinly laid ground while the edges are still open and searching. Two red wax seals on the back later placed it in Venice in the early 19th century.