Portrait of Helena Fourment, Rubens' second wife, wearing a fur coat over her shoulders
Medium
Etching
Dimensions
Sheet (Trimmed): 9 1/16 × 6 3/8 in. (23 × 16.2 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1951
Accession Number
51.501.7542
Tags
Art Historical Context
This delicate etching captures the alluring beauty of Helena Fourment the second wife of the illustrious Baroque master Peter Paul Rubens, draped seductively in a fur coat over her shoulders. Created in 1728 by engraver Frans van Stampart it reproduces Rubens' famous early 17th-century oil portrait, known as *Het Pelsken* ("The Little Fur"). At just 9 1/16 × 6 3/8 inches, the trimmed sheet exemplifies the intimate scale of reproductive prints that popularized Rubens' sensual, voluptuous style long after his death in 1640. Etching, an intaglio technique where acid bites into a metal plate to c...
About the Artist
Helena Fourment|Peter Paul Rubens|Frans van Stampart (British|Flemish|Flemish) · 1746 |1614 |1577 –1823 |1673 |1640
British, London? 1746/47?–1823 Paris|Flemish, Antwerp 1614–1673 Brussels|Flemish, Siegen 1577–1640 Antwerp