Wedding Banquet with the Archduke Albert and the Archduchess Isabel Clara Eugenia

This was painted around 1612, in the middle of the Twelve Years' Truce, the one long pause in the war between Habsburg Spain and the Dutch provinces that had broken away from it. Jan Brueghel served the rulers of the Spanish Netherlands, Archduke Albert and the Infanta Isabella, and here he sets them down at a country wedding among their peasant subjects. The bride sits at the center under a plain straw canopy, and the archdukes take their place at the same crowded table, presiding but mingling. It reads as a picture of harmonious rule, the sovereigns at ease with the humblest people they governed. Brueghel gives nearly as much care to the four leafy trees and the open air behind the feast as to the guests themselves.