''Portrait of Maria di Antonio Serra'' is a 1606 oil-on-canvas painting by

Peter Paul Rubens Sir Peter Paul Rubens (; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque traditio ...

, painted on the occasion of the sitter's marriage to Duke Nicolò Pallavicino in 1606 and now in the

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

collection at

Kingston Lacy Kingston Lacy is a country house and estate near Wimborne Minster, Dorset, England. It was for many years the family seat of the Bankes family who lived nearby at Corfe Castle until its destruction in the English Civil War after its incumbent ow ...

History

One of the earliest works produced by the artist in

Genoa Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the List of cities in Italy, sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian ce ...

, it shows the wife of Pallavicino, a banker as well as host to Vincenzo I Gonzaga of Mantua, Rubens' then employer. Despite the heraldic details on the curtain at top left, the identity of its sitter had been lost by the time it first appears in the written record, namely Ratti's 1780 guide to the city. It and the same artist's ''Portrait of a Noblewoman, probably Marchesa Maria Grimaldi, and an Attendant'' (also at Kingston Lacey) were later acquired by the Grimaldi family, who misidentified the former as Marchesa Isabella Grimaldi. Both works were acquired in Genoa in 1840 by William John Bankes.

References

Serra Serra (Latin for "saw") may refer to: People * Serra (footballer) (born 1961), Portuguese footballer * Serra (surname) * Serra (given name) Cities, towns, municipalities Brazil *Serra, Espírito Santo, a city in the Greater Vitória area *Ampar ...

category:Portraits of women category:Paintings in Kingston Lacy category:1606 paintings {{17C-painting-stub