Marchesa Maria Grimaldi, (oil on canvas)

ruling family of Monaco; portrait now displayed in the saloon of Kingston Lacy; The sitter is elaborately dressed. Her gown is fronted, edged and sleeved with gold braiding, and the cuffs are small white ruffs while around her neck is a vast cart-wheel layered ruff. It is a sumptuous full-length portrait, probably of the marchesa Maria Grimaldi, whose father, Carlo Grimaldi put his villa at Sampadierna at the disposal of Rubens and his employer, Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga of Mantua, in 1607. She is accompanied by a dwarf who pulls aside a curtain revealing a grand architectural setting composed of a colonnade of Corinthian pillars, the foremost pillar entwined with flowers coming from the formal garden to the left and her dog who has A M inscribed on its collar.