Portrait of a Young Woman

The feathered beret and the fur-trimmed black cloak in this portrait are later additions. Research at the Mauritshuis, which owns the panel, showed that some of the overpainting was done before 1700, while the blue in the cloak dates from the 18th century. Rubens himself painted the young woman's face in the 1620s, and part of her dress. Other hands completed most of the rest.

When the picture was conserved, the later layers were left where they were, so what hangs today in the Gallery Prince Willem V in The Hague is the portrait as it was reworked over the following century.

Like the other young woman by Rubens and his studio in the same collection, it was once said to show one of the painter's wives, in this case Helena Fourment, whom he married in 1630. That identification has never been confirmed.