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Rubens's portraits of friends and family members are some of his most appealing paintings to a modern eye. This intimate likeness probably represents Susanna (1599–1628), a sister of Helena Fourment, Rubens's second wife and the youngest of the Antwerp silk merchant Daniel Fourment's seven daughters. Long before Rubens married Helena, the sisters were on close terms with the painter's family because their eldest brother, Daniel Fourment (1592–1648), was married to Rubens's first wife's sister, Clara Brandt. In 1617 Susanna Fourment married Raymond del Monte, who left her a widow four years later; their only child, Clara (1618–1657), married Albert (1614–1657), Rubens's eldest son from his first marriage. Susanna's second husband was Rubens's good friend Arnold Lunden.
The portrait is painted in the solid, unbroken manner characteristic of the beginning of Rubens's middle period, the time of his Jesuit Church altarpieces.
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