2:25 PM: today i did some rubens research and was taken with the portrait he made of his 16 year old bride, helena forment in a fur robe. he married her was he was 53, after his first wife died from the plague, the image is still taking shape and i'm stopping for the day so we can walk up to the stupa, the previous image was not that exciting to me, and ended up being quite a downer. you can detecy, to the right of her face, a background influenced by vermeer's the art of painting. while rubens is known to have collaborated with brueghel on at least 25 paintings, i am creating an after-the-fact collaboration with vermeer.