Portrait of Catharina Behaghel

Portraits of a married couple were usually turned slightly toward each other, so that the two canvases read as a pair. Jordaens did something unusual for Catharina Behaghel and her husband, the Antwerp merchant Rogier Le Witer, in 1635. Both look straight out at us. She sits square in a broad armchair, 38 years old according to the inscription, in black silk with a loose open overgown, pearls at her throat and wrists, a closed fan in her hand and a rock-crystal medallion at her breast. The Rijksmuseum thinks she was probably pregnant when she sat for him. The gilded herm beside her is a woman, where her husband's is a man. The couple's portraits and one of his mother passed from owner to owner as a set, and the museum bought all three together in 2002.