Isabella Brant
Artist: Sir Anthony van Dyck (Flemish, 1599 - 1641)
Date: 1621
Medium: Oil on canvas
Collection: National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, United States
Description
Isabella Brant was the first wife of the Antwerp master Peter Paul Rubens, whom she married shortly after his return from Italy in 1609.
The monumental Italianate partition at the entrance to the garden at Rubens's mansion, an Antwerp landmark designed by the artist-owner himself as one of northern Europe's first classically styled structures, provides a fitting setting. Rubens had placed sculptures of Mercury, god of painters, and Minerva, goddess of wisdom and learning, atop the screen. In his portrait, Van Dyck moved the statue of Minerva to an imaginary position behind Isabella's right shoulder, reinforcing the link between his sitter and the goddess. Van Dyck added to Isabella's liveliness and flair through the angled rhythms of the orange-red curtain behind her, the colorful elegance of her red-and-gold dress, the shimmering gold and jeweled chain draped across her chest, and the clouds passing across the blue sky. Isabella Brant died in 1626 at age 34 of the bubonic plague, leaving behind a desolate Rubens and three children.
