Isabella Brant

The painting is executed in oil on canvas, measuring 153 × 120 cm. Van Dyck's handling shows the influence of his master Rubens: the brushwork, color palette, and costume all echo Rubens's contemporary portraits of his wife. A red curtain draped in the upper-left corner adds a Venetian-inspired theatricality. The background features the courtyard of Rubens's house, built in a Baroque style, anchoring the portrait in a specific, personal setting.

The work thus blends Flemish Baroque conventions with the emerging stylistic traits of van Dyck's early independent career.

The portrait was painted in 1621 by Anthony van Dyck in Antwerp, during his period as Rubens's assistant. It has been speculated that van Dyck created this work as a gift for Rubens and his wife, Isabella Brant, prior to his departure for Italy. For a long time, the painting was erroneously attributed to Rubens himself.

The background depicts the courtyard of Rubens's house, built in a Baroque style of Rubens's own design. Its provenance begins with the Parisian collector Pierre Crozat (1665–1740). It passed through the Crozat family and was purchased in 1772 for Catherine II of Russia via Denis Diderot, entering the Imperial Hermitage Gallery.

In August 1930, it was sold by the Hermitage (then still attributed to Rubens) through intermediaries to Andrew W. Mellon. It was deeded to the A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust in 1932 and gifted to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in 1937.

The painting was long attributed to Peter Paul Rubens, reflecting its close stylistic resemblance to Rubens's own portraits of Isabella Brant, likely due to van Dyck's direct emulation of his master's technique and palette. Scholars now identify it as one of van Dyck's earliest works, painted in 1621 just before his departure for Italy. It reveals the young artist's adoption of Rubens's Venetian-inspired motifs, such as the red curtain and background view of the Rubenshuis courtyard, while also anticipating his later success as a leading portraitist at the court of Charles I of England.

The portrait thus occupies a pivotal position as a transitional piece, demonstrating van Dyck's maturation under Rubens's influence and his subsequent development of an independent style.

This oil on canvas portrait, painted by Anthony van Dyck in 1621, depicts Isabella Brant, the first wife of his mentor, Peter Paul Rubens. Created just before Van Dyck's departure for Italy, the work served as a gesture of gratitude to Rubens. The painting captures Brant standing before the distinctive Italianate garden screen of her husband's Antwerp residence, a structure Rubens himself had designed. The artwork measures 153 by 120 centimeters.