Helena Fourment in Her Wedding Dress

Rubens married Helena Fourment on 6 December 1630. He was 53, a widower and one of the most famous men in Europe, a painter who also carried out diplomacy for the Spanish crown. She was 16, the daughter of an Antwerp silk merchant, and 37 years younger than her husband. In the ten years of life he had left he painted her again and again, and this picture comes near the start, showing her in the rich dress of the wedding. The museum notes that it grew while he was working on it. It was planned as a three-quarter-length portrait and enlarged to its present monumental size. Rubens also set her chair at a slight tilt, a small informality that suits a sitter so young. The elector Max Emanuel bought the panel for the Bavarian collection in 1698.