Marchesa Balbi

In this majestic full-length portrait, Marchesa Balbi sits frontally in a high-backed chair, her elegant, deep-green dress trimmed with gold brocade billowing around her. She gazes directly out at the viewer with disarming warmth, given the extraordinary sumptuousness of her costume. With one hand resting on her lap and the other dangling a fan against her dress, she seems relaxed and natural, and the portrait feels unexpectedly personal despite its large scale and imposing grandeur.

Anthony van Dyck had a remarkable ability to understand his patrons' personalities and to reflect them in his portraiture. Although the precise identity of this young and attractive member of the Balbi family is not known, the Balbis were prominent members of the Genoese aristocracy. They commissioned a number of portraits from Van Dyck in the mid-1620s. His relationship with the Balbi family may even have preceded his trip to Italy, as a branch of the family lived in his hometown of Antwerp.

The grand, elegant style of this painting owes much to Van Dyck's one-time mentor Peter Paul Rubens, who had traveled to Genoa in the first decades of the 17th century and executed a number of imposing portraits, such as _Marchesa Brigida Spinola Doria_ (also in the Gallery's collection). Van Dyck would have seen these portraits after he arrived in Genoa in 1621. Although Van Dyck was inspired by Rubens's portraits, he brought an entirely different expressive character to his own work. In this example, he has softened the architectural qualities of the Marchesa's costume and introduced elements of informality in her pose and in the undulating ripple in the oriental carpet beneath the her feet, further enhancing the portrait's engaging tenderness and candor.