A Couple
Also titled Een echtpaar
Maarten van Heemskerck (Heemskerk, 1498–1574)
1529
- Medium
- panel, oil paint (paint)
- Classification
- painting
- Dimensions
- frame: height 101 cm x width 83 cm x thickness 5.5 cm
- Museum
- Rijksmuseum
- Credit line
- Gift of D. Katz, Dieren and N. Katz, Dieren
- Rights
- Public Domain Mark, as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
About this work
The woman is depicted as an industrious, virtuous housewife. The basket on the wall holds the yarn she has already spun. It has recently been suggested that the sitters are the Amsterdam draper Hubert Pietersz and his wife Trijn Jacobsdr, partly because the ledger on his table reads: ‘Betaelt Hubrecht [= Hubert] boucs.’ It is not clear why she occupies the side usually reserved for men. This important position was traditionally associated with purity and power.
