Guillem van Deynen's lady: a new acquisition for Palazzo Spinola in Genoa

The latest acquisition of the National Gallery of Palazzo Spinola will be presented on Wednesday, September 27, at 5 p.m.: it is a Portrait of a Lady painted by the Flemish Guilliam van Deynen (Antwerp, 1575 - Brussels, post-1618). The work, datable to the early seventeenth century, was in all likelihood kept in a Genoese picture gallery: there are clear links with the Portrait of a Genoese Lady also painted by van Deynen in 1610 (it is a dated and signed work) and kept at the Palazzo Bianco Museum, also in Genoa. In fact, the artist stayed in the city: in documents about him he is mentioned as “Guglielmo Fiammingo,” and he was in Liguria precisely at the time when Genoa was attracting masters from Flanders, just think of the sojourns of Rubens and van Dyck. It was precisely during one of van Deynen’s sojourns (there is evidence of one in 1602 and another in 1606-1607, a two-year period in which, moreover, the painter kept a workshop in Genoa) that he probably executed the work purchased by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, which has destined it for the National Gallery of Palazzo Spinola: an excellent purchase that enriches the collection with a work strongly linked to the territory.

The portrait, typically seventeenth-century, shows a lady with a face that produces a hint of a smile, with delicate features that do not transcend into any kind of idealization, dressed in sumptuous and well-groomed clothing on which the large gorget stands out, and wearing a large pearl necklace (and we also find pearls in the tiara that adorns her head).

The work will be presented, as mentioned, in a meeting to be held at the National Gallery of Palazzo Spinola, which will be introduced by the Gallery’s director, Gianluca Zanelli, and art historian Anna Orlando: the two specialists will retrace the history of the painting and its recent acquisition.

Guillem van Deynen's lady: a new acquisition for Palazzo Spinola in Genoa

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