Ritratto di Hipolita de Male (?-?), moglie di Henri de Vicq, signore di Meulevelt (1573-1651)

In 1625 Rubens was in Paris, hanging an enormous cycle of two dozen canvases he had painted on the life of Marie de' Medici, the queen mother, for a gallery in her new palace. That commission had reached him partly through a Flemish diplomat named Henri de Vicq, who years before had introduced the painter to the queen. Rubens repaid the favour in the currency he knew best. He painted de Vicq, and he painted the man's wife, Hypolite de Male, the woman here, set down in a dark dress and a wide starched ruff against a plain ground. After Rubens' lifetime the little panel dropped out of sight for roughly a century and a half before surfacing again at a London auction in 1992.