Hélène Fourment

Hélène Fourment (also Helena or Helene , born April 11, 1614 in Antwerp , † July 15, 1673 in Brussels ) was the second wife of Peter Paul Rubens . Like his first wife Isabella Brant , she stood for nineteen portraits, and Rubens worked her features into other portraits.

Life

Fourment was the daughter of a friend of Rubens' carpet dealer Daniel Fourment and his wife, who in turn was Isabella Brant's sister. So she was Rubens niece through his first marriage. She married the painter in 1630 at the age of seventeen. The marriage had four children: Clara Johanna, Franz, Hélène and Peter Paul, the last was born after Rubens' death.

The couple lived in Steen Castle not far from Mechelen . Some of Rubens' most important paintings with her are: Hélène in a bridal gown (1630), between Rubens and his son in the garden (1631), undressed in a fur coat (“Das Pelzchen”, around 1636/38), as Cecilia with putti (1638), Putti flying in the hurricane in the love garden (1635).

After Rubens' death, Fourment married Count Johann-Baptist von Brouchoven, with whom they had five children. One of them was Jan van Brouchoven , second Count von Bergeyck and important Dutch politician (Vice-Governor of the Netherlands, Spanish Prime Minister).

• Portraits of Hélène Fourment
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  Helene Fourment “in a wedding dress” , around 1630/31, Alte Pinakothek , Munich

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  Hélène Fourment and her children , Louvre , Paris

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  Helena Fourment (“Das Pelzchen”) , around 1636/38, Kunsthistorisches Museum , Vienna

literature

• Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. A thousand biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag , Munich 1963, p. 170.