Portrait of Marie-Louise de Tassis

Van Dyck's portrait of Marie-Louise de Tassis represents the Antwerp aristocracy that was central to his patronage base during his years as the city's leading portraitist before his departure for England in 1632. The Tassis family were prominent in the Spanish Netherlands, controllers of the imperial postal system, and their wealth and status made them natural patrons of the most fashionable painter in Flanders. Van Dyck's portrait technique had developed Rubens's example — warm tonal underpainting, fluid brushwork, glazed shadows — into something more refined and more aristocratically elegant, perfectly suited to the self-presentation of the Spanish Netherlands nobility. His ability to invest his sitters with an air of effortless superiority, largely through the management of pose and the virtuosic rendering of costly fabrics, made him the most sought-after portraitist in Europe. The painting is now held at the Liechtenstein Museum in Vienna, part of one of the great private collections of European Old Masters that has preserved numerous Van Dyck portraits.

Van Dyck renders the noblewoman with characteristic refinement, using the elaborate costume and elegant pose to create an image of aristocratic grace that exemplifies his contribution to Baroque portraiture.