Weddings, Portraits and the de Brays

Fresh from her own wedding in Rome, Anna Maria Di Brina writes about the desire of every bride for that perfect picture – and how little that’s changed over the centuries.

It was visiting the Dulwich Picture Gallery’s exhibition Painting Family: The de Brays that I found myself at wondering about the repetition throughout centuries of some particular human needs.

Jan De Bray’s marriage portraits

Jonkheer van Wissen and Gudula de Bisschop on 20 January 1670 drew up their marriage settlement and promptly asked Haarlem painter Jan De Bray to commemorate the event painting their portraits.

Jan de Bray, Portrait of Gudula van der Wiele de Bisschop, private collection (thanks to Dulwich Picture Gallery)

The result are two of the most beautiful paintings on display. The sitters shine in an elegant contrast of black and white colours. The man wears a fashionable petticoat with bows on the sleeves and shoulders and a linen collar trimmed with a precious lace.

Anna Maria and husband at their wedding in Rome

The bride’s dress is made valuable by a lace collar, whose softness is shown  in smooth and feathery brushstrokes. She is dressed up with a double row of pearls and dangling earrings. Their faces gleam in a white and rose complexion that exalts the tenderness and lightness of their young flesh.
It is evident that, as quite every couple who ever married, they wanted to be remembered at the top of their shape, at the peak of their beauty. This is what I was wondering about, fresh-married in Rome this September.

It is so amazing, the necessity to be remembered, the desire to leave an eternal mark of one’s external image that just in the day of one’s wedding seems to be so compelling and to find its perfect expression (and how human is the image, recently published in some newspapers during the devastating Chinese earthquake, of the man leaving his house’s rubble with his marriage portrait hooked around his neck!).
We are all packed with digital photos and films of every single event of our life. But when it comes to our wedding, we can’t do without looking for the perfect image, for the one which will last forever, which will give the exact idea of the feelings, the look, the age and beauty of the couple. Like in a wonderful, unique work of art.

Rembrandt’s Jewish Bride

Rembrandt's Jewish Bride, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Together with the Arnolfini Wedding by Jan van Eyck, I find that the Jewish Bride by Rembrandt Van Rijn is one of the most striking and impressive wedding portrait in art history. Different from the De Brays couple, even if depicted nearly in the same period (1666) the subjects are portrayed together in the same canvas and the attention is all about the tender intimacy shared between a man and a woman who are deeply in love. They appear intimately and delicately connected in a warm embrace and leaning of the bodies toward one another, that makes the viewer feel a calm and cosy chain of love between the two.
I had probably this atmosphere in mind, mixed with a subtle aspiration toward the golden beauty of a renaissance bride, when I asked a friend to immortalize my wedding ceremony with her bright shots.
Sadly, she lost her camera the day before the wedding, leaving me with sleepless nights. I realised with powerless disappointment that my outstanding groom and I were destined to collect an assortment of diverse pics from all our guest but…that we forever will miss the one!

Painting Family: The de Brays is at Dulwich Picture Gallery until Sunday 5 October. Hurry! Last chance to see!