Portrait of a Couple, Probably Isaac Abrahamsz Massa and Beatrix van der Laen, Frans Hals, c. 1622 – (Frans Hals) ◄ Previous Next ►

Artist: Frans Hals

Date: 1622

Size: 140 x 167 cm

Technique: Oil On Canvas

The informal seated poses and joyous demeanour of the couple in this portrait make it one of the most captivating in 17th-century Dutch art. The wife affectionately rests her right hand on her husband’s shoulder, and both regard the viewer with infectious smiles. Hals’s inspiration to show his life-size sitters at full-length seated in a garden may have come from Rubens’s Self-Portrait with Isabella Brandt in a Honeysuckle Bower from around 1609-10 (fig. a), which the Haarlem painter could have seen when he visited Antwerp in 1616. The composition of this, Frans Hals’s only double portrait of a husband and wife, is unusual, however, in that the sitters have been placed off to one side rather than in the centre of the painting. While the potential inspiration from Rubens’s portrait cannot be denied, the sitters’ poses in the present painting, their tender intimacy and left of centre placement probably developed out of Hals’s Family Portrait in a Landscape from a few years earlier.8 Not mere vegetation, the plants surrounding the couple probably had a symbolic function, alluding to their status as newly-weds.9 The central motif is the sparkling vine clinging to the tree behind and between the couple. In 16th- and 17th-century love poetry and emblematic literature this motif served as a metaphor for the steadfastness of friendship or love that could even survive past death. Just as the vine leans on the tree for support, the woman in Hals’s portrait leans on her husband. The clay pots on the right of the composition are symbols of life’s fragility and reinforce the notion that love can endure past death. Because of its clinging nature, the ivy to the right of the woman was also a familiar symbol of steadfast love and faithfulness, as well as fertility. The thistle shown prominently beside the man evolved from being considered an aphrodisiac in antiquity to a symbol for fidelity in marriage in the Renaissance, especially male fidelity as the German word for the plant, Männertreu, suggests. The placement of the man’s hand over his heart in this context takes on the meaning of swearing an oath of fidelity. The landscape in the middleground to the right of the couple has rightly been associated with the Garden of Love. It is significant that the space occupied by the married couple in the double portrait appears separate from the garden behind. The heraldic position of the portrayed couple differs too from that of the two couples seen promenading in the distance, and while the man in the foreground wears black, the men around the fountain in the middleground wear coloured doublets. The latter are obviously still in the courtship phase of their relationships. The married couple in the foreground, on the other hand, have left this part of the garden behind them. When the present painting was put up for sale in 1851, the sitters were identified as Frans Hals himself and his second wife, Lysbeth Reyniersdr.10 This identification was rightly dismissed by Hofstede de Groot in 1910.11 A few years later Binder suggested Frans Hals’s younger brother Dirck (1591-1656) and his wife Agneta Jansdr as possible candidates.12 They probably married in 1620 or 1621, which would make this suggestion a possibility as the portrait can be dated to the early 1620s stylistically and on the evidence of the sitters’ dress. There is, however, no undisputed portrait or self-portrait of Dirck Hals with which a comparison could be made. This is not the case with the identification of the couple first tentatively put forward in the Rijksmuseum catalogue of 1934, once again in the 1960 catalogue and most extensively argued in a 1961 article on the painting by De Jongh and Vinken.13 Their candidates were Isaac Abrahamsz Massa and Beatrix van der Laen. The son of Flemish immigrants, Massa was baptized in Haarlem on 7 October 1586.14 From the age of 14 or 15 he spent eight years in Moscow, becoming an authority on Russia. Later he often travelled to Moscow again as a merchant and representative of the States-General. He was apparently also in Swedish service as a diplomatic agent, for which he was ennobled by King Gustav II Adolf in 1625. On 25 April 1622, Massa married Beatrix van der Laen (1592-1639), a daughter of a former Haarlem burgomaster. While the date of this couple’s wedding also corresponds to the dating of the present painting, the husband has been identified as Isaac Massa on the basis of other portraits. The only substantiated portrait of Massa is a small oil sketch by Hals now in San Diego (fig. b) that served as the model for a 1635 engraving by Adriaen Matham.15 On the basis of the San Diego painting, the sitter in a 1626 portrait by Hals in the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, has also been identified as Massa (fig. c).16 Complicating matters is the fact that yet another portrait by Hals was mistakenly identified as Massa’s in the past on the basis of the San Diego work.17 The Toronto portrait, however, also carries the sitter’s../..