Het Pelsken: Portrait of Hélène Fourment, Rubens's wife; a fur cloak wrapped around her

Details

After Sir Peter Paul Rubens
Het Pelsken: Portrait of Hélène Fourment, Rubens's wife; a fur cloak wrapped around her
inscribed and dated PELSJE '92 lower left
oil on canvas
174.2 x 93.3 cm

Special notice

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Lot Essay

The prototype of circa 1635/40, oil on panel, 175 x 96 cm, is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (H. Vlieghe, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XIX-2, 1987, pp.91/4, ill.). As pointed out by Vlieghe, loc.cit., Het Pelsken should be seen as a portrait historié of the artist's wife as Venus, the Goddess of Love. Rubens's source of inspiration probably lay in Titian's Lady in a Fur, then in the collection of King Charles I, which Rubens would have seen when visiting London and of which he is known to have made a copy, now in the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane Australia (H. Wethey, Titian, II, pp.106/7, no.48).

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