Martin van Cleve, Antwerp ca. 1527 - ca. 1581 Antwerp, Attributed

This museum piece shows the bride being taken to bed after the wedding ceremony. Here the wedding guests accompany the bride to her chamber. In this group of people, the woman without the bonnet can be identified as the bride. She is also holding a rosary, chamber pot and candle in her hands, which are considered typical utensils of the bedchamber. The woman to her left has taken her arm and seems to be leading her to the room. In front of her, a little girl raises a piece of fruit, possibly a pear as a symbol of fertility. To the right stands a bagpiper, the only one in the group of people who seems to be looking directly at the viewer. Figures in the background enliven the densely packed genre scene. Another important interaction is provided by the man behind the bride, who reaches under the woman's arm from behind and almost touches her belly - perhaps also a reference to the outcome of the upcoming wedding night? The bride has tilted her head back and is looking down at the man's arms with a smile; presumably this is the groom. This smile distinguishes the painting from other known depictions of this subject, in which the bride is mainly shown crying. The Flemish inscription above her reveals the following (in English translation): "I must laugh, though it urges me to weep. However much I grieve, my countenance remains cheerful, there are many who still sit and wait, if they were brides like me, they would laugh with me." Above the men on the left edge of the picture, the bridegroom and his companion, there is another inscription which reproduces the Flemish inscription in French. However, this inscription may have been added later when the painting changed hands and was exhibited in a different cultural context. 

The painting can be stylistically and thematically attributed to the Flemish painter Marten van Cleve, who became master of the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke in the early 1550s and learned the craft of painting from Frans Floris (Antwerp 1519 - 1570 Antwerp). His genre scenes mostly represent wedding celebrations and related themes. A similar depiction with an inscription, but with a weeping bride, is found in the engraving "Evening of the Wedding" (Rijksmuseum RP-P-1980-113) by the fellow painter Peeter Baltens (Antwerp c.1527 - 1584 Antwerp). Here the bride is shown with the same utensils as well as similar headgear, the bagpiper is added on the right and on the left she is touched by a man (the groom?) in front of her breast. This testifies to the popularity of the theme in the 16th century.  

Bibliography: 

Björn Blauensteiner, Marten van Cleve (1526/27-1581). Prolegomena zu einer Neubewertung, in: Jahrbuch des Kunsthistorischen Museums 17/18 (2015/16), pp. 119-132.

G.T. Faggin, De genre-schilder Marten van Cleef, Oud Holland, Vol. LXXX, 1965, 34-46.