SIR ANTHONY VAN DYCK | Portrait of a widowed lady, three-quarter-length, holding a glove and a fan

Palazzo Borromeo, Milan, whence acquired, circa 1880–90, by
James S. Budgett, Stoke Park, Guildford;
Thence by descent.

S.J. Barnes, O. Millar et al., Van Dyck. A complete catalogue of the paintings, New Haven and London 2003, p. 228, cat. no. II.102, reproduced.

The canvas has been relined and there is a visible old horizontal seam running across the width of the canvas, 27 cm. from the lower edge. The paint surface is a little flattened and shows evidence of wear in many areas, most notably in the sitter's cloak, and in some of the lighter tones. There is a series of old, repaired damages visible to the naked eye: a 6 x 4 cm. repaired damage in the upper right corner; a 17 cm. Y-shaped tear in the cloak, centre right; and a 5 cm. old tear beside the glove. Inspection under ultraviolet light reveals old discoloured restoration to all of the above, including the seam, and further strengthenings are revealed around the sitter's neck and left shoulder, and to much of her face and veil. The painting is in overall fair condition. Offered in an elaborate, later carved and gilt wood frame with large foliate decoration.
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This painting was rediscovered not long before it was published for the first time in the authoritative Van Dyck monograph (see Literature). It is a portrait that dates to the time that the young Van Dyck spent in Genoa, where he arrived in November 1621 for 3 months, aged only 22, before returning in 1623 to spend much of the next four years there. During this comparatively brief period Van Dyck secured his reputation largely through painting portraits of the Genoese nobility, whose taste had already been informed by his master Rubens’ sojourn in the city in 1605–06. The painting is closely related to two other Genoese portraits of widows by Van Dyck, one in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin,¹ the other in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg.² Although almost none of Van Dyck’s Italian portraits are signed or dated, it is believed that all three of these likenesses were executed early on in his time there. The structure and position of the lady’s right hand here, for example, is particularly characteristic of his Genoese paintings of this date.

While the women in the two aforementioned portraits gaze directly out at the viewer, this lady, a generation older, turns beyond the frame, apparently lost in thought. The sympathy with which Van Dyck portrays the widow in her relative old age is distinctive, and reflects a facility that the artist appears to have had for depicting the elderly even early on in his career. The lady’s veil, collar, and the V-shaped piece that comes down from her shoulders to her stomach, are all remarkably similar to the costume worn by the widow in the Strasbourg painting.

James S. Budgett owned a number of Italian Renaissance paintings, including an autograph version of Granacci’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt and a cassone by Biagi d’Antonio, formerly attributed to Botticelli, as well as an early watercolour by Turner – Geneva and Mont Blanc from the Lake. An undated, late 19th-century receipt in the archives of Budgett’s descendants describes the present portrait among a group of other pictures purchased for 15,000 Italian lire, while the picture still hung in the Borromeo Gallery (now the Galeria Ambrosiana) in Milan.

1 Inv. no. 782C; see Barnes et al. 2004, p. 227, cat. no. II.100, reproduced.
2 Inv. no. 200; see Barnes et al. 2004, p. 184, cat. no. II.38, reproduced.