Marchesa Elena Grimaldi Cattaneo

Sir Anthony van Dyck

A servant shields the resplendent marchesa with a parasol as she sweeps out onto the terrace of her palazzo, eyeing us watchfully.

Van Dyck’s portrait subjects—men as well as women—regard us imperiously, self-aware. All of the painting’s details and composition assure us of the sophistication of this altera donna, or grand lady. The marchesa’s exceptional and disproportionate height emphasizes her stature, literally and figuratively. The red sunshade held aloft extends her presence, forming a halo about her head that contrasts against a dramatic sky and emphasizes our position beneath hers.

The black attendant holding the marchesa’s parasol alludes to the active slave trade from Africa to Genoa. His inclusion in her portrait probably has an artistic source in the Italian Renaissance artist Titian, whom Van Dyck admired and who portrayed black servants in his canvases.

Shown from the knees up, a woman with smooth, pale skin and rosy cheeks wears a satin gown and densely pleated, wide collar in this vertical portrait painting. She stands with her body angled to our left but turns to look at us from the corners of her luminous brown eyes. She has curved, black brows, a straight nose, and her strawberry-red, bow-shaped lips turn up in a slight smile. Her honey-brown hair is tightly curled under an elaborate pearl, gold, and feather headdress in the shape of a bouquet of flowers. The pearl earring in the ear we can see rests against the lace-edged ruff, which presses up against the back of her head and extends to the width of her shoulders. She wears a long-sleeved, champagne-white satin gown trimmed with gold and jewels. A white satin cloak with amber-gold lining falls open from the elbow of each sleeve. The cuffs are edged with layers of narrow lace, and she holds a mostly closed fan in her right hand, farther from us. Both arms hang by her sides. Behind her head and shoulders, cranberry-red drapery billows down from above over forest-green marble columns. Light shines from our left, illuminating a brown pillar and mantel behind the woman, along the left side of the canvas.

Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Marchesa Brigida Spinola Doria, 1606, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.60

The painting closely echoes Peter Paul Rubens’ portrait of another Genoese lady, Marchesa Brigida Spinola Doria. Elements such as Marchesa Cattaneo’s parasol and her architectural setting are related to the red drapery of Rubens’ Marchesa Bridgida Spinola Doria, similarly imposing architecture, terrace setting, and general demeanor of grandeur.

Throughout his career Van Dyck competed with his immensely famous peer (and teacher) Peter Paul Rubens (outliving him only by a year). Yet Van Dyck’s style and approach were distinctive. Note, for example, is the way he made the Marchesa Cattaneo appear to float, her dress swaying, as if she has been captured in a passing moment, in contrast to the greater formality of Rubens’ portrait. Van Dyck aspired to what he called an “airy style,” interpreted to mean qualities of grace, ease, and effortlessness. In this work, even the clouds seem to carry that message as they drift over the distant landscape.

Van Dyck also completed portraits of the marchesa’s two eldest children, Maddalena Cattaneo, 1623 and Filippo Catteneo, 1623.

About the Artist

Sir Anthony van Dyck, Self-Portrait, probably 1626/1641, etching, Rosenwald Collection, 1943.3.8250

Anthony van Dyck was a hugely successful and sought-after portraitist in European courts during the seventeenth century. Despite this high profile, critical fortunes often cast him in the long shadow of his famous teacher, Peter Paul Rubens. Yet the life stories of Van Dyck and Rubens also make the two artists’ lives inextricable.

Van Dyck was a child prodigy. His father, a successful fabric merchant, had enrolled him to train in the studio of an Antwerp painter by age ten. At 14, Van Dyck’s talents came to the attention of Rubens and became a frequent presence in the older artist’s studio. By the time he was 19, Van Dyck was a master in the artists’ guild and was receiving independent portrait commissions while simultaneously working as a studio assistant to Rubens. His natural gifts earned him a key role in the production of a number of Rubens’ large commissions. The artists eventually came to serve many of the same patrons, including Maria de’ Medici of France, the Dutch stadtholder Frederick Hendrick, and Archduchess (later regent) Isabella of the Spanish Netherlands.

In 1620, Van Dyck struck out on his own, making his first trip to England where he started a long and fruitful relationship with the British aristocracy. After several months in England, Van Dyck returned to Antwerp, where he painted a portrait of Rubens’ wife Isabella Brant before traveling to Italy to study Renaissance and classical art. He took a particular interest in the work of the Venetian artist Titian and sketched copies of his work in a notebook.

A woman with pale, peachy skin wearing elegant gold and ink-black garments sits in front of a stone portico in this vertical portrait painting. Her red armchair is angled to our right, but the woman turns to look at us under cocked brows. She has high, rosy cheekbones and a long straight nose. Her pink lips curve up in a smile framed by the faint suggestion of dimples. Her brown hair is pulled back under a gold band or net, and a gold earring hangs from the ear we see. Her gold dress has a fitted bodice with a line of buttons down the front and puffy, brocaded sleeves. She wears the bodice over a white chemise, which comes nearly to the double strand of pearls worn like a choker around her neck. Frothy white lace surges up to encircle the back of her neck, and more lace stretches back along her forearms from the cuffs of her gold dress. The black cloak she wears over the dress splits over the sleeves and flares up behind the neck, echoing the lace. A long gold chain weaves back and forth across the open front of the black cloak, which is patterned with black on black. The woman wears a ring on her right hand, which rests in her lap and holds a white flower. The cloak stops at the woman’s knees to reveal a gold and red striped skirt. The woman’s other hand, farther from us, rests along the arm of the chair and holds an ostrich' feather fan with a silver handle. A scarlet-red curtain in the upper left corner above the chair gives way to a view into a courtyard lined with a portico along the right side. The portico has three openings separated by wide, horizontally ribbed columns. Ornamental shells, creatures, and people are carved into the face of the portico, and bright green trees are just visible through the openings. Gray and white clouds sweep across a vivid blue sky around the woman’s head.

Sir Anthony van Dyck, Isabella Brant, 1621, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.47

Genoa, with its strong mercantile and financial ties to Flanders, became Van Dyck’s primary base in Italy. There, he found a ready clientele for his fashionable portraits, history paintings, and devotional and mythological subjects. In the palazzi he visited, he would have seen Rubens’ Genoese portraits of 15 years earlier and would have taken inspiration from them. Rubens’ Marchesa Brigida Spinola Doria is the artistic forebear of Marchesa Elena Grimaldi Cattaneo.

Related Resources

Artist Information
Sir Anthony van Dyck (Flemish, 1599 - 1641)

Catalogue
Flemish Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the National Gallery of Art

Image Download
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A tall woman with pale white skin and a shorter man with brown skin stand on a terrace in this vertical, full-length portrait. At the center, the woman wears a voluminous, long-sleeved, black dress with a row of gold buttons down the bodice. She has a wide, gray ruffled collar at her neck and red ruffled cuffs at her wrists. Her brown hair is pulled back under a cap ornamented with rows of white pearls. She looks at us close-lipped down the bridge of her straight nose. She holds a sprig of orange blossoms in her right hand, on our left. The second person leans into the space from our right as he reaches to hold a crimson-red parasol over and behind the woman’s head. He is cleanshaven with short, dark hair and brown eyes. He wears an amber-yellow garment over a white shirt. Fluted columns rise along the right edge of the composition, and the terrace is enclosed with a low balustrade. Plants surround the woman's feet, and a distant landscape below a blue sky is visible to our left. — Sir Anthony van Dyck, *Marchesa Elena Grimaldi Cattaneo*, 1623, oil on canvas, Widener Collection, 1942.9.92

After Italy, Van Dyck returned to Antwerp. This was a fruitful period for the artist. In 1632, he was knighted by the English court (as Rubens had been) and named painter to King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria. In 1639 he married an Englishwoman, Mary Ruthven, the daughter of a lord and a lady-in-waiting to the queen. His numerous portraits of the Stuart monarchs and members of their court have left an indelible mark on the understanding of that period of English history, as well as on subsequent generations of English painters, such as Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough.

Van Dyck was very ill by late 1641 and died in London at age 41, several days after the birth of a daughter. Despite his young age, he left a prodigious number of paintings. Today there hundreds of extant portraits in museums around the world. Van Dyck was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral, his tomb there destroyed by the great fire of London in 1666.

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