Portrait of Marchesa Maria Serra Pallavicino

Rubens was still in his twenties and in the service of the Duke of Mantua when he spent time in Genoa around 1606, painting the city's banking families in dazzling full-length state. This marchesa sits in stiff, jewel-crusted silk under a great looped-up red curtain, small against the towering column and drapery behind her. She was married to Niccolò Pallavicino, a Genoese banker who hosted Rubens' employer, Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga, and the sumptuous gown may be one she wore to a grand ball thrown for that visit. Her name slipped out of the record over the centuries. She was identified only recently, from the coats of arms worked into the curtain above her head. The portrait later came to England and now hangs in a country house in Dorset.