Figural Study for the _Garden of love__ Hélène Fourment c. 1632

Peter Paul Rubens was the most famous and sought-after painter in Europe when he married Hélène Fourment (1614-1673), the beautiful young daughter of an Antwerp merchant, in 1630, his first wife having died some years previously. The happiness his second marriage brought him began at the start of the last decade of his life. It inspired him to create the grandiose painting of the 'Garden of Love', today in the Prado in Madrid. It shows happy couples convivially assembled in an Arcadian setting, with Rubens himself leading his young wife into the circle of lovers.The chalk drawing at the Städel Museum is a study for the figure of Hélène Fourment in the 'Garden of Love'. The emphasis, however, is not on the portrait, but on the figure's harmony of balance as it steps hesitantly forward, and on the material effect of the bouffant dress. With complete assurance regarding the graphic means at his disposal, Rubens does not draw in an exploratory manner but depicts the effect of the precious fabric and its lively movement with rapid, unhindered chalk strokes, and by making virtuoso use of the free areas of paper and adding a few sections heightened in white. The head and face are outlined with a few delicate lines; light red hatching across the face introduces the shy inhibition of his beloved.This masterful drawing, perhaps the most beautiful of the studies for the 'Garden of Love' to have survived, originated in the collection of the founder of the Städelsches Kunstinstitut, who acquired it at the end of the eighteenth or beginning of the nineteenth century. This example not only shows that Johann Friedrich Städel sought to assemble works by the greatest master artists in order to form a descriptive history of art, but also that in doing so he demonstrated a precise eye for what was exceptional and of high quality.