Peter Paul Rubens
440 years ago Peter Paul Rubens, one of the greatest painter of the Flemish Baroque, was born. On this occasion we had to feature one of my favorite paintings created by him—a portrait of his second wife, Helena.
“[…] I decided to get married because I was not yet ready to live in the renunciation that is celibacy. […] I took a wife from a good but bourgeois family, although the whole world tried to convince me to marry a lady of the court. But I feared the pride, the plague of nobility […], and thus I liked the idea of taking a wife who does not blush when she sees me pick up a brush.” (Rubens in a letter to his friend Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc) In December 1630, the 53-year-old Rubens married the 16-year-old daughter of the Antwerp silk merchant Daniel Fourment. Even Rubens’s closest friends did not refrain from alluding to the great age difference between the bride and groom. His first wife, Isabella Brandt, had died of the plague in 1626.
Helena Fourment recalls the type of the ancient Venus pudica, the shameful Venus, which covers her nakedness with both arms. In addition, Rubens knew Titian's "Girl in a Fur" (you can look up for it in our Archive), who also wore a fur-lined coat around her body; In both paintings the contrast between the light, soft skin and the dark velvety fur is shown with great sensitivity.
The traditional title of the painting, “Het Pelzken” (“The Little Fur”), comes from Rubens himself, who bequeathed the work to his young wife as a private gift. She never sold the painting; it was inherited by her children and is not documented in the inventory of the Picture Gallery of Kunsthistorisches Museum before 1730.
In the autumn of 2017, from October 17, 2017 to January 21, 2018, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna is honouring this giant of European art history with a major exhibition. Visitors will be able to discover Rubens' oeuvre in a wide range of media, such as drawings, oil sketches, panel paintings and large scale canvases. It will be a must see in this season!