Albert and Nicolaas Rubens

The portraits of Rubens’ children - of Clara Serena, Albert and Nicolaas - are entirely personal. In the full-length portrait of Albert and Nicolaas, Rubens’s two sons by his first marriage, the ,most prominent feature is the informal way in which the boys seem to pose, which also bears witness to the painter’s great empathy with the children’s nature: Nicolaas, the playful child,completely relaxed, and his serious elder brother Albert, a studious bookworm, posing rather self-consciously as a scholar.