Portrait of Policena Spinola, marquesa de Leganés

The sitter was the eldest daughter of Ambrogio Spinola, the general who commanded Spain's army in Flanders, and her father is elsewhere in this museum, in Velázquez's Surrender of Breda, leaning forward to take the keys of the captured town. She was born in Genoa in 1600 and lived there until 1622, when she left for Madrid. Her husband, Diego Mesía y Guzmán, became the first marquis of Leganés, which is where the title in the picture's name comes from. The museum dates the canvas between 1622 and 1627, the years Van Dyck was working in Italy. It afterwards hung in the marquis's house in Madrid, and the inventory of his collection, drawn up in the 1650s, lists it as number 455. He had gathered more than a thousand paintings, one of the largest private collections in 17th-century Spain.