Wedding Portrait of Isaac Massa and Beatrix van der Laen

A married couple sits close together in a garden, the merchant Isaac Massa leaning back with an easy arm, his wife Beatrix resting her hand on his shoulder, both turned to us with relaxed, faintly amused smiles. Frans Hals throws out the era's stiff formality for a marriage portrait of startling warmth and informality - the loose, lively brushwork, the comfortable poses, the symbols of fidelity in the ivy and peacock behind. Now in the Rijksmuseum, it captures not rank or piety but affection and ease, two people genuinely glad of each other.