Rubens ~ The Artist and His Wife

The Honeysuckle Bower (ca. 1609) is a self-portrait of the Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens and his first wife Isabella Brant, soon after their marriage. They married when she was 18, about half his age. They had three children together, and she died of the plague after 17 years of marriage in 1626. Rubens later remarried Helen Fourment, age 16, with whom he had five children. Rubens was a disciplined and devoted family man.

The painting is a full-length double portrait of the couple seated in a bower of honeysuckle. Rubens depicts himself as an aristocratic gentleman with his left hand on the hilt of his sword. They are surrounded by love and marriage symbolism: the honeysuckle and garden are both traditional symbols of love, and the holding of right hands represents union through marriage.