Portrait of Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia (Rubens)

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Portrait of Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia (Rubens)

The Portrait of Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia is a 1625 painting by Peter Paul Rubens. It shows Isabella Clara Eugenia, who was the Infanta of Spain and the wife of Archduke Albert of Austria. After Albert’s death in 1621, she became a nun in the Poor Clares, a path she began on 22 October 1621.

Isabella visited Rubens’ studio in 1625 while returning from Breda to see the painting in progress. The work was made as a master copy from which several other versions could be made.

The master copy is now in the Galleria Palatina in Florence. It was once exchanged for a similar portrait by Anthony van Dyck, which is now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Two other copies are known to be in private collections, and a third copy (with a modified background) resides in the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. The Norton Simon painting measures about 115.6 cm by 88.6 cm.