The Lovers

A marriage in Venice in the early 16th century did not have to happen in a church. It needed a promise exchanged in front of a witness, and without the witness the promise did not hold. That custom lies behind the reading most often given to this picture, which Brera bought in 1890 from the collector Giovanni Prinetti. A betrothal, the couple absorbed in each other, and the third man behind them there because the agreement needed someone to see it. The argument is not closed. Scholars still differ over the necklace the woman wears, whether it is a pledge or a payment, and over who that man in the background is. The belt at her waist is the detail that keeps the marriage reading alive. It is a paternostro, a beaded girdle given at weddings as a sign that the union would hold.