Portrait of Giovanna Spinola Pavese

In 1606 Rubens was not yet the famous man he would become. He was 29, working for the Duke of Mantua, who had sent him down to Genoa to paint the city's banking families. Genoa was then one of the richest places in Europe, its money keeping the Spanish crown afloat, and its aristocracy wanted portraits to match that fortune. Rubens gave them exactly that. He stood Giovanna Spinola Pavese on a canvas nearly two and a half metres tall, in a heavy gown of dark silk and lace, a column and a drawn curtain behind her. The scale alone is a statement about her rank. This way of painting a noblewoman full length, seen slightly from below so she looks down at you, is something Rubens worked out in these Genoese years, and a young Van Dyck would carry it to the English court a generation later. Look at the lace at her collar and cuffs, set down thread by thread against the dark.