An Unfinished Rubens

The Guardian UK has a very interesting article on the upcoming sale of an unfinished painting of a lady, possibly painted by Rubens.  The painting will be auctioned next week, and much of its history remains a mystery.  The estimate for the painting ranges from $6.6 million to close to $10 million dollars. To read and view the Sotheby's listing for the painting, click HERE. It may be hard to view in the thumbnail image, but it appears the painting of the lady is complete, but the background of the painting does not fill the complete canvas.

The Guardian article states:

Who the lady with the determined chin is, why the most famous painter of her day never finished her portrait, and where she has been hanging for most of the last 400 years, remain mysterious – but she is now valued at up to £6m, as a previously unrecorded work by Rubens.

"It's a fascinating piece precisely because it is unfinished, so she seems to step into life out of nothingness," said Alex Bell, an expert on old master paintings at Sotheby's, where the painting will be auctioned next week. "Although the face and the hand are finished, you can see how he sketches in the ruff and details of the costume by dragging the paint quickly across the canvas – it gives you a wonderfully immediate feeling of how he worked."

Sir Peter Paul Rubens probably painted the woman in a magnificent Spanish costume around 1603, when he travelled from the Netherlands to Italy and Spain and perfected his technique. It may have been part of a commission from the duke of Mantua, which Rubens mentioned in letters, to add the most handsome women in the Spanish court to his "gallery of beauties", but the canvas was probably a sketch from life intended to be finished later. There is no evidence that the duke ever got her or any other beauties.

The only hints of what happened to the painting come from two red wax seals on the back, one proving that it was in Venice in the early 19th century at a time when many church and private collections were broken up and the other showing it was part of the Hanmer family's collection at their mansion, Bettisfield Park near Wrexham.

To read the full Guardian article, click HERE.