LIFE IN COLOUR

THE SECRET HISTORY OF SOME OF OUR MOST BEAUTIFUL HUES IS A COLOURFUL TALE TO TELL

Words: KASSIA ST CLAIR Photography and styling: EMMA HARRIS

Lead-tin yellow THERE ARE MANY mysteries in the art world: the identity of Vermeer’s ‘Girl with the Pearl Earring’, the whereabouts of Caravaggio’s ‘Nativity with St Francis and St Lawrence’, who pulled off the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist… One riddle that has attracted little attention and has yet to be solved, is the curious case of the yellow that vanished. Peter Paul Rubens and Isabella Brant were married in St Michael’s Abbey in Antwerp on 3 October 1609. Isabella was the daughter of Jan Brant, an important citizen; Rubens had a large workshop in Antwerp, and had just been appointed as a court painter. The double portrait Rubens painted of himself and his new wife brims with love and confidence. Isabella wears a dashing straw hat, a large ruff and a…

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The Simple Things (Digital) - 1 Issue, November 2016 - Issue 53

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