Portrait of Sebilla van den Berghe

Around 1630 Antwerp was a city of the Spanish Habsburgs, and its port had been choked for decades, ever since the Dutch closed the river Scheldt to its shipping. Money still passed through the city, and some of it passed through the hands of Sebilla vanden Berghe's husband. Filips Godines, from a family of Portuguese origin, collected the Spanish king's taxes in Antwerp. Sebilla herself came from a rich Antwerp merchant family. Van Dyck painted the couple as a pair of standing full-length portraits, each more than two metres tall, and her husband's hangs in the same room. That format had been worked out in the 16th century for the nobility and was soon taken up by wealthy citizens too. The column and the heavy drapery behind her give the picture the aristocratic air the museum points to. Her canvas still sits in one of the old gallery frames from Schleissheim Palace outside Munich.