Portrait of a couple, probably Isaac Abrahamsz Massa and Beatrix van der Laen ^Sale

Frans Hals (1622)

Wedding portrait of Isaac Abrahamsz Massa and Beatrix van der Laen, married in Haarlem on 25 April 1622. The couple is seated on a platform under a tree. A thistle on the left, ivy on the right. In the background on the right, elegant couples walking in a garden with a fountain at a country house. This happy, smiling pair sits comfortably close to each other. Posing a couple together in this way was highly unusual at the time. It may have been prompted by the sitters’ friendship with the painter and the occasion for the commission – their marriage in April 1622. The painting thus contains references to love and devotion, such as the garden of love at right, and at left an eryngium thistle, known in Dutch as ‘mannentrouw’, or male fidelity.