Conrad Faber was the house painter of the Frankfurt patriciate in the first half of the sixteenth century. Among his many portraits of members of the leading families, this pair – which the humanist Justinian von Holzhausen had painted of himself and his wife – is especially prominent. A feature seldom seen in painting north of the Alps is the winged Cupid who creates a connection between the two subjects with his arrow and a bunch of grapes. His presence evokes sensual love as the basis of marriage – an astonishingly outspoken reference to sexuality. The couple’s children, however, who had already been born by the time the work was executed, were not yet of portrayable age.