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My Other Favorite Painting

 This is my other favorite painting; it's by Peter Paul Rubens. It has a title--but I prefer to give it my own title. I've selected the title "Leaving the House."


Little Frans, the boy, has run ahead and ascertained that the car door is locked. He wonders why Peter Paul can't hurry up, find the remote key fob, and click the "beeper" button. Mom, Helena, worries that it might rain. Peter Paul understands that the trip ahead will involve walking--the family is heading to the zoo. Wouldn't it be smart to double back and locate the stroller?

Right now, I'm watching "The Americans"; the main story that interests me is about the married Jennings couple and their teen daughter Paige. Whenever the Jennings share a secret, they exchange looks, and their daughter notices the look, and the camera notices the couple *not* noticing Paige's moment of observation. When Paige visits her parents' fake travel agency, she jokes that Mom wants to "convert" her to the Church of the Family Business. Mom is in fact a Soviet spy--and she wants to train Paige to be a spy--and her manipulations are a source of strife within the Jennings marriage. Mom lets out a laugh at Paige's joke, but it's a bizarrely anxious laugh (because it's really a laugh about Soviet/American tensions and about Dad Jennings's lingering moral scruples). The camera notices Dad's awkward response--and it notices Paige noticing Dad's awkward response.

There are other things to observe in the Rubens painting. According to the Met, the milky hand next to the ruddy hand is part of a statement: Rubens is asking us to think about the gap between youth and advanced age. The contact between the two hands is an allusion to sex. The twin "sashes" are a way of linking the father and son.

There is a cliche about stories: You need only a He and a She. Rubens is working in that particular tradition. I always try to visit this painting if I'm at the Met.





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