Retrato de una mujer, tradicionalmente identificada como Isabella Brant

This panel is not all one moment. It began as a smaller portrait painted somewhere between 1622 and 1626, and it was extended at the sides and along the bottom no earlier than about 1637. The sitter has long been identified as Isabella Brant, daughter of an Antwerp town secretary, whom Rubens married in 1609 and lost to plague in 1626. By the time the extra boards went on he had been married to Helena Fourment for several years. The head is worked up with great care while the wine-red ground behind it is laid in loosely and fast. She wears blue-green velvet with fur over one shoulder, and the whole thing is painted on oak.