An allegory of music and marital harmony by Theodoor van Thulden

Theodor van Thulden was one of the most prolific painters in Rubens’s circle. Having lived for a time in Antwerp, he helped to create large decorative cycles for Rubens. On his return in 1643 to 's-Hertogenbosch (which remained part of the Spanish Netherlands until 1629), he painted numerous allegorical, mythological and religious works, moving closer to Van Dyck’s style. When van Thulden painted the allegory of Love Crowning Music in 1652, the artist, then aged forty-six, was at the height of his artistic maturity.

The subject – the allegory of Harmony and Marriage – had been depicted on several occasions. A later version is held in Brussels, at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. The inscription, signature and date appear in the bottom right-hand corner of the canvas (‘T. van Thulden fecit. 1652’). The Brussels painting was acquired in 1898 from a private collection, suggesting that the subject must have been highly prized in the late nineteenth century. There is another version, very similar to the one in Brussels, without a signature, held at the Central Museum in ‘s-Hertogenbosch.

The Aulteribe version differs significantly from the Brussels one: musical staves and a decorative element depicting a swan appear at the lower left-hand edge of the painting. The young woman in the Brussels version seems closer to the Rubenesque ideal than the one in Aulteribe’s version. The hands have also evolved: they show less detail in the skin tone in the Aulteribe version than in the Brussels version. Clothing and jewellery, on the other hand, are identical, with the exception of the bottom of the dress, where the fur has been replaced by feathers: this is clearly an exercise in variation, which is also a stylistic reinterpretation of the theme. A torch appears in Cupid’s hands in the second version, with a more structured rendering of the background, where an architectural setting is sketched out. In the Aulteribe version, Van Thulden centres his composition on the imposing theorbo, a majestic polyphonic instrument strung with 19 strings, embodying art music in this more classical version, with a simple, frontal composition, harmonious in its colours and light, and simplified in its realistic rendering.

David Mandrella notes, with regard to this painting, that the art historian Hans Schneider (Oud Holland, 1928) raises the possibility that the lute player might be Maria van Balen, the painter’s own wife, who was herself the daughter of his first master. Whilst this hypothesis is not certain, the idea that she is the painter’s wife is appealing and is consistent with the Latin inscription on the Brussels painting: “Just as harmony resounds in the lute, so harmony crowns marriage” (Quam bene concordi sona (?) / in testudine chorda / Tam bene concordi in / Coniuge corda sonant).

The Age of Rubens in French Public Collections; exhibition catalogue edited by Jacques Foucart and Jean Lacambre, National Galleries of the Grand Palais, 17 November 1977–13 March 1978, published by the National Museums, 1977.

A. Roy, Theodoor van Thulden, A Baroque Painter from Rubens’ Circle, exhibition catalogue , Strasbourg City Museums, Nordbrabants Museum in Bois-le-Duc/’s-Hertogenbosch, 1991/1992, no. 47 (pp. 205–206).