Portrait of a Couple probably Isaac Massa and Beatrix van der Laen

Almost nobody smiled in a 1622 portrait, and married couples were painted stiffly, on separate canvases, keeping their distance. Frans Hals threw all of that out. He seated Isaac Massa and Beatrix van der Laen together on the ground under a tree, leaning into each other, both openly grinning. This is the only double portrait Hals ever made, and the ease of it was genuinely new. The details carry the message: the ivy climbing near Beatrix stands for a love that clings and stays green, and off in the imaginary garden behind them sits a statue of Juno, the Roman goddess of marriage, beside a fountain. Massa was a Dutch merchant and envoy who had spent years in Russia, which may be why Hals gave him such a worldly, unbuttoned look.