Marchesa Maria Grimaldi, and Her Dwarf

The Marchesa Maria Grimaldi with her Dwarf (c. 1606) at a National Trust property was painted during Rubens's Genoese period, when he produced a series of magnificent full-length aristocratic portraits for the city's great banking families that together constitute one of the most important contributions to the genre in the entire history of portrait painting. The Genoese portraits established a compositional template — the full-length figure placed in an architectural setting, often framed by a grand staircase, loggia, or garden balustrade — that Rubens would develop throughout his career and that profoundly influenced Van Dyck's later Genoese and English portraits. The inclusion of a court dwarf follows a convention of aristocratic portraiture stretching back through Velázquez to late Medieval precedents: the dwarf's reduced stature simultaneously emphasised the sitter's height and the social distance between them. The painting's extraordinary scale — 241 × 140 cm — places the viewer physically below the marchesa, reinforcing the hierarchical message of the composition through spatial means.

The monumental full-length portrait demonstrates Rubens' command of the formal aristocratic portrait format. The rich fabric of the marchesa's gown is rendered with characteristic attention to texture, while the architectural setting enhances the sense of grandeur.

This Genoese portrait from 1606 is now in the Kingston Lacy collection. The full-length format and rich black fabrics have presented challenges for conservation — keeping the subtle distinctions within the dark tones while cleaning. The painting has been relined and carefully restored.