Portrait of Marchesa Maria Serra Pallavicino (c.1575-c.1630), 1606 (oil on canvas)

This is one of the most stunningly lavish portraits ever painted. The sitter is wearing an opulent silvery-silk gown laid over with gold embroidered lace which almost entirely covers the bodice and stomacher and falls in a wide border down the front of the skirt and along the bottom edge. Large golden oversleeves hang from her mid arm and fall to the floor while small stiff ruff-cuffs are worn at the wrist. Her head emerges from a vast white and silver lace cartwheel ruff, the hair dressed high with flowers, sprays of jewels and a white egret feather. She sits on a red plush high-backed chair with a parrot perched on it. The background is grand, composed of a stone classical arch with ionic pilasters which are inlaid with dark marble, a large scarlet drape and a strip of sky with clouds. It was painted by Rubens, as a gift - (D[ono] D[edit])- on one of his visits to Genoa. It was acquired by William Bankes (1786–1855) in 1840, as of the marchesa Isabella Grimaldi. But that identity would appear, however, to have been conferred upon it by the Grimaldi family, which had latterly owned it. When first referred to, in Ratti’s guide to Genoa of 1780, the sitter was anonymous.. New research into the heraldic motifs of the curtain drawn up above this sitter’s head has identified her as Maria Serra, the wife of Niccolò Pallavicino, banker and host to Rubens’s employer, Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga of Mantua, whose hospitality in 1606 included a sumptuous banquet and ball, at which she probably wore the dress in which she is portrayed.