A young woman gazes at the viewer with confident poise. She plays nonchalantly with the chain in her hand, and one can imagine her running her fingers along it, drawing attention to the ring she wears. Her eyes are animated with a sense of familiarity, while her parted lips suggest she is about to greet the person before her. The portrait is marked by a striking contrast between the sketch-like execution of the background and dress and the considered treatment of her face and hand. The bravura with which Rubens renders the ruff, enlivened by the wavy white highlights, imbues the sitter with an almost vibrating aura. This painterly energy seems to reflect her lively personality, lending the likeness a beguiling electricity. Her captivating presence is heightened by the painting’s almost entirely monochrome palette. The brown of her dress is echoed in her hair and eyes, while the warmth of these tones is punctuated with touches of red throughout the portrait, most notably in her sensuous lips and the rosette pinned into her elaborate hairstyle. The painting’s spontaneous execution, together with the ochre ground layers showing around the edges, offers a glimpse of the master at work. These features suggest that it may have been left unfinished or conceived as a sketch intended to serve as a guide for a finished portrait.

The picture most likely dates to Rubens’ Italian period (1600–08), although its precise origins and the identity of the sitter remain open-ended. Her dress, characterised by its hanging sleeve – comprising a voluminous outer sleeve worn over a close-fitting inner sleeve – and the elaborate, open standing ruff that rises behind her head, is Spanish in style and datable to shortly after 1600. This may point to the painting’s conception during Rubens’ first journey to Spain in 1603–04, undertaken as a diplomatic mission on behalf of Vincenzo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua (1562–1612). It has been suggested that this picture may have formed part of a group depicting Spanish court ladies commissioned by the duke for his ‘Gallery of Beauties’, although it is uncertain if he ever executed this request. Yet, this style of dress was also prevalent at other European courts, particularly in Genoa and Naples, both of which were subject to strong Spanish influence. Rubens spent time in Genoa between 1605 and 1606, a period during which he developed as a portraitist. While this tall style of dressing the hair had largely fallen out of favour in Italy by 1605, replaced by a fashion of small tight curls, it does not exclude the years he spent in Genoa as the portrait’s possible place and date of execution. Rubens’ abilities in the field of portraiture were already well-established before his journey to Spain, as is demonstrated by the accomplished full-length equestrian portrait he painted there of the Duke of Lerma. More recently, an alternative thesis has proposed an earlier date of execution for the Klesch Collection’s portrait, during the artist’s first sojourn at the Gonzaga court in 1600–03 and the identification of the sitter as Felicita Guerrieri Gonzaga, one of Vincenzo Gonzaga’s favourite mistresses.