Helena Fourment Putting on a Glove

In Antwerp in the early 1630s a pair of fine gloves was an expensive thing, an accessory that told everyone at a glance what a family could afford. Rubens puts one at the centre of this portrait of his young wife, Helena Fourment. Her hands are busy with it at her waist, and the museum points out how that small, casual movement gives an otherwise formal picture its spontaneous feel. He painted it on an oak panel just under a metre tall, around 1632. Munich also owns his full-length portrait of her in her wedding dress, and beside that grand picture this one seems far simpler and more intimate. It reached Munich in 1698, when Max Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria and then governor of the Spanish Netherlands, bought it from the collector Gisbert van Colen.