Marriage Portrait of Isaac Massa and Beatrix van der Laen

About this work

Artist

Frans Hals (1582–1666)

Year

c. 1622

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

140 × 166.5 cm

Collection

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Movement

Dutch Golden Age

A husband leans back against a tree with a broad smile while his wife rests her hand on his shoulder and smiles too, the two of them seated at full length in a garden where other couples stroll by a fountain. The pair are almost certainly Isaac Abrahamsz Massa, a Haarlem merchant and diplomat who traded with Russia, and Beatrix van der Laen, married in Haarlem on 25 April 1622; Massa was Hals's friend, and the painting dates from about that year. A thistle grows on the man's side and ivy on the woman's, old emblems of fidelity. Life-size double portraits of married couples were rare in the Dutch Republic, and this relaxed, affectionate version had no precedent. It passed through the Six family of Amsterdam before the Rijksmuseum acquired it at the Six van Hillegom sale in 1851, and for a time it was wrongly thought to show Hals and his own wife.

This print reproduces the whole work, uncropped, from a high-resolution scan of the original. The original is in the public domain.