Double Portrait of Willem II (1626-1650), Prince of Orange, and Princess Mary Stuart (1631-1660), later Princess Royal

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There can be no doubt about the identity of the sitters in the present double portrait: they are Princess Mary (1631-1660), the eldest surviving daughter of King Charles I of Great Britain (1600-1649) and Queen Henrietta Maria (Henriette Marie de Bourbon; 1609-1669), and Willem (1626-1650), Prince of Orange, Count of Nassau, the eldest and only surviving son of Frederik Hendrik (1584-1647), Prince of Orange, Stadholder and Captain General of six (at the time) of the United Provinces and Amalia van Solms-Braunfels (1602-1675).

The double portrait commemorates the wedding of the sitters on 12 May 1641. The bridegroom holds the left hand of his bride and draws attention to the wedding ring on her third finger. The Prince stands on the sinister side (on her left) in recognition of his bride’s superior royal status; she is in the place of honour, on the dexter side (on his right).⁹ But he is given the greater prominence, as he is placed slightly before her, to emphasize the dynastic significance of the wedding for the princely house to which he was heir. The disposition of the protagonists was unusual and was thus probably carefully worked out, most likely it was dictated by an adviser or advisers of the prince and princess of Orange.

For Prince Frederik Hendrik, the marriage of his heir into the royal house of Stuart and to the eldest daughter of the king of Great Britain was a triumph for the house of Orange-Nassau because it would add greatly to its prestige and standing.¹⁰ He had been accorded the title of Altesse or Highness, reserved for princes of the blood, by King Louis XIII of France (1601-1643) in 1637, a form of address which was soon adopted by the States General;¹¹ its extended use to Prince Willem was confirmed by Charles I as the bridegroom made his way to London.¹² The special ambassadors, sent by the prince of Orange to negotiate the marriage in London, quickly let their jubilation be known once the king had agreed to it.¹³

An anonymous, contemporary print, with verses by J. Soet in English and Dutch and published by Frans van Beusekom (active Amsterdam and London 1642-65), illustrated the disparity in the social hierarchy between the parents of the young couple.¹⁴ And from the point of view of the house of Stuart the marriage was a mésalliance following as it did earlier aspirations for a double wedding with the children of King Philip IV of Spain (1605-1665), of the house of Habsburg.¹⁵ In fact, Charles I was under increasing domestic pressure; he may have hoped to influence the Calvinist Scots, whose army had occupied the north-east of England from the late summer of 1640, through the offices of the Calvinist prince of Orange.¹⁶

The marriage was quickly arranged: the ambassadors extraordinary, sent to negotiate it, arrived in London early in 1641; and in a letter of 21 February, Charles I wrote to Frederik Hendrik agreeing to it.¹⁷ The marriage contract was signed on 25 March, and Prince Willem arrived at Gravesend on the Thames estuary on 29 April with a retinue of 150 followers, and was received at court the following day.¹⁸ The master of ceremonies recorded that the date of the wedding was ‘suddenly designed’ to take place on 12 May in the household chapel in Whitehall Palace.¹⁹ The king and the Dutch ambassadors had agreed that the solemnities should be ‘courte et sans rien d’extérieure’ – that there was not to be ‘so much as a show of a public feast’²⁰ – no doubt because of the political turmoil in London. The prince did not take leave of his parents-in-law until 2 June.²¹ In the intervening days, the king’s most powerful councillor, the Earl of Strafford, was beheaded for high treason. As the Venetian ambassador reported, ‘The disturbances continue in this Court with increasing peril to the royal house …’.²²

The prince is recorded as having made gifts of jewellery to the princess among others before, during and after the ceremony;²³ these are recorded in a list headed ‘Presents to be given in England by Prince Willem of Orange.’²⁴ At her bosom in the Rijksmuseum picture the princess wears a jewel described at the time as a casket of four stones and a pendant of cut diamonds;²⁵ it had been bought by the prince’s father from the renown Antwerp jeweller Gaspar Duarte (1548-1653) for 48,000 guilders and was given to her on the day after her wedding.²⁶ She received at the same time ‘the one hundred and twenty pearls which had belonged to the Infanta [Isabella Clara Eugenia, Infanta of Spain and Governor of the Netherlands]’²⁷ and which Prince Frederik Hendrik had bought from Elias Voet (1586/88-1653) also of Antwerp for fl. 40,000.²⁸ However, on her wedding finger is the ‘ring … not the diamond ring but a simple gold ring’²⁹ which, as the prince reported to his father, in a letter of 27 May, he had given to the princess during the ceremony after the marriage vows had been made: ‘The bridegroom laid a little Ring of Gold upon the Common Prayer Book, which he put upon the Bride’s Finger’.³⁰

No archival information has been published concerning the dress worn by the princess at her wedding; that shown in the portrait is described by Ribeiro as a silver tissue court dress and ‘one of the grandest and exquisitely painted dresses in Van Dyck’s work’.³¹ For De Winkel it is a wedding gown of cloth of ‘silver’, which followed the tradition of France, Holland, Scandinavia and German-speaking countries.³² The princess’s appearance, she points out, accords with the account given in a likely to be authentic manuscript account edited in 1733 and published in 1774 as an appendix to Leland’s Collectanea: ‘ … the Bride habited in White embroidered with Silver, her Hair tyed up with silver Ribbands, not dishevilled about her shoulders as in former Times used, her Head adorned with a Garland of Pendant Pearls … ’; this goes on to describe her as wearing only an abundance of pearls including ‘a Rose of six great pendant Pearls’ at her breast (rather than the diamond brooch depicted by Van Dyck); thus apart from the dress, though without the train,³³ the Princess is not portrayed here in the ensemble that she is described as having worn at her wedding.

The accounts of Dutch steward Arend van Dorp show that the groom in anticipation of the wedding followed the example of ‘the court and gentry [who] are preparing gorgeous liveries and rich clothes …’.³⁴ Van Luttervelt³⁵ believed that one of the elaborate suits itemized in Van Dorp’s accounts, is that worn by the prince in the portrait:

16 May, made:
a suit and cloak, to this rose-colour taffeta, canvas and stiffening /
5½ yards rose-colour tabby at 24 shill [for a cloak] /
9½ yards silver tabby [for a doublet] at 32 shill the yard [for the doublet and lining the cloak] /
3½ yards armosin, silk, stitching and sewing silk [for lining] /
Stiffening for the collar [of the doublet] and chest /
White satin to line the collar [of the doublet]/
14 dozen ells of silver lace, weighing 62 ounces at 5½ shill. the ounce /
Silver buttons, canvas and stiffening [for the cloak] /
For making, as above, 5 pounds and 10 shills.³⁶

This suit is not that portrayed by Van Dyck, as De Winkel has kindly pointed out, as the prince is shown in a rose-coloured satin suit embroidered with silver; there is no sign of the silver-coloured doublet or the watered effect of silk tabby. As Van Dorp was using the Gregorian style for dating, the suit he itemized would have been available on 12 May, but it is unlikely that the prince would have worn it at the ceremony. The account in the Collectanea describes him then as wearing ‘a Suite and Cloak of unshorne [the pile uncut] velvet richly embroidered with Silver’,³⁷ which De Winkel believes was most probably black, an embroidered suit of black velvet being normally worn by noble bridegrooms. Of course it is possible that Van Dyck depicted a suit owned by the prince – he is shown holding a beaver hat, doffed as the princess's precedence required, which was perhaps the one he had had bought in London – but De Winkel points out that very often at the time the doublet and breeches were different from the cloak in fabric, colour and trimming. So the prince’s costume, however elegant, may in part be fanciful.

The Rijksmuseum painting was usually described as an autograph work by Van Dyck until the late 1920s, when Schneider³⁸ followed by Glück in 1931, referring also to Burchard,³⁹ expressed reservations. Adriaen Hanneman (c. 1601-1671) and Peter Lely (1618-1680) were associated with its execution.⁴⁰ Hanneman can be ruled out, as he had left England by 1638 and was listed in the Haarlem painters’ guild in 1640.⁴¹ Peter Lely’s candidature is to a degree validated by Houbraken’s confused account of his journeying to England in 1643 (sic) to paint the portraits of the bridal couple.⁴² Indeed nothing certain is known of the young Lely between 1637 and 1647, but he is not specifically named as one of the prince’s retinue; nor can he be counted among the categories of servants also listed.⁴³ Also, it seems inherently improbable that he should thus have personated Van Dyck’s manner, or that he should have joined an experienced and accredited studio for the purpose of executing the commission, especially as portraiture seems not to have been his early speciality. Indeed the 1976 museum catalogue preferred not to be specific, and simply lists the work as by Van Dyck’s studio. Millar expressed some further guarded qualifications in 1982,⁴⁴ but more recently he enthusiastically endorsed Van Dyck’s authorship by describing the painting as ‘an exceptionally important commission, the last surviving work of this significance carried out for a royal [sic] patron and with conspicuous success’.⁴⁵ The handling of the figures compares with other portraits executed in the summer of 1641: the full lengths of Princess Mary (private collection, England) and of the Prince of Wales in military dress (Newport, Rhode Island, Newport Restoration Foundation).⁴⁶

However, there is little evidence here of Van Dyck’s brushwork in the background, where the sky is worn and characterless. The damask hanging and masonry are pedestrian in handling, although the motif itself – the juxtaposing of a damask hanging with a column silhouetted against the sky – would certainly have been most likely familiar in the studio;⁴⁷ it had been earlier used in the full-length portrait of King Charles I in the British Royal Collection Trust.⁴⁸

The two faces are handled differently perhaps to convey a contrast – as might then have been expected – between the groom’s extrovert masculinity and the bride’s feminine modesty. Van Dyck would have been familiar with Princess Mary’s developing physiognomy; indeed a portrait (private collection, England)⁴⁹ of her had been sent to the prince before his departure for England (Charles I had joked about it at his first meeting with the prince).⁵⁰ Van Dyck may have relied on his study for this picture when executing the Rijksmuseum double portrait. But he had not seen the prince for some ten years,⁵¹ thus obviously necessitating a more prolonged study of his appearance. The brooch and wedding dress of the princess would have also required detailed study; the prince’s apparel may have depended – as noted above – on the artist’s inventive powers. Twelve days are left unaccounted for in the prince’s diary of his visit.⁵² In one or two of such, Van Dyck could have had the opportunity to effect the necessary preparatory work. The clothes in the painting are rendered with a convincing attention to detail that presupposes at the very least Van Dyck’s active and close supervision.

Although the double portrait is first listed in the possession of the bridegroom’s mother in The Hague in 1654, there is no certainty as to whether it was commissioned for the house of Orange or for the house of Stuart, whose court painter Van Dyck was. It does not feature in the detailed accounts of Charles I’s possessions at the Commonwealth Sale of 1649 and years following. Nor has any payment for it been traced in the Oranje-Nassau archives. But it seems unlikely that the work was painted for Charles. Given that the focus of the work is principally on Prince Willem the commission most probably came from one or both of his parents, who were already patrons of the artist as Millar was the first to suggest.⁵³

If that is indeed the case, it can be assumed that the commission was effected on their behalf by the ambassadors extraordinary whom Frederik Hendrik sent to negotiate the marriage and who attended the bridegroom. Or it may perhaps have been commissioned by one of these diplomats independently, especially as no payment to the artist is recorded in Van Dorp’s very detailed accounts of the expenditure of the prince and his retinue during their trip to London.⁵⁴ The most likely candidate among them is the most senior, Johan Wolfert, Count of Brederode (1599-1655), who, it seems, himself commissioned a portrait of Princess Mary from Van Dyck.

This emerges from a letter written to him on 13 August 1641 from the Countess of Roxburghe, lady of the bedchamber to the queen and preceptress of the royal children.⁵⁵ It was in reply to one evidently enquiring about a painting which he had expected from Van Dyck but was overdue. The wording of the letter is ambiguous, but it seems to refer to three rather than two paintings by Van Dyck; their execution had been delayed, because, as Lady Roxburghe explained, the artist had been ill for much of the time since the ambassador’s departure in early June. This meant that – in her words – ‘I could not have the portrait [of Princess Mary], destined for the prince [probably Willem] … until this time.’ Van Dyck had promised the Queen [Henrietta Maria], to whom Van Brederode seems also to have written, that ‘he will have yours ready in eight days’. She reported that the artist was to leave for Holland in ten or twelve days and that he would bring it with him along with ‘another which he will make for Madam the Princess of Orange’, i.e. Amalia van Solms.⁵⁶

Two portraits of the princess (private collections, England) painted after her marriage are extant;⁵⁷ they can probably be identified with the first two pictures discussed by Lady Roxburghe. That for the young prince was probably despatched to Holland soon after she wrote; it is of superior quality and shows the face of the princess slightly fuller than in the portrait earlier sent to the prince,⁵⁸ which he had implicitly criticized by gallantly remarking that he found the princess more beautiful than her portrait, ‘plus belle que son portrait’.⁵⁹ Although there is no proof, the third picture, referred to by Lady Roxburghe, as intended for the princess of Orange, may be the Rijksmuseum double portrait, especially as Amalia van Solms was documented as its owner not long thereafter.

There is no good reason to doubt that Van Dyck made this journey to the northern Netherlands, although no other accounts corroborate it. Baudouin believes that he travelled from there to Antwerp and thence to Calais, where he is known to have been around 4 October, determined to travel on to Paris.⁶⁰ That the double portrait was already in the northern Netherlands in the 1640s is perhaps demonstrated by the similarity of the poses of the young couple with those in the print, published by Frans van Beusekom, in which Frederik Hendrik, who died in 1647, and Charles I, executed in 1649, both appear with their spouses.

Probably at least partly in recognition of the dynastic importance of this double portrait, Van Dyck’s assistants appear to have executed copies before the original left the studio. Most likely one of these rather than the Rijksmuseum picture should be identified with the ‘One picture called the Prince and Princess of Orange’ which was one of a group of pictures found in Van Dyck’s studio at his death in December 1641, and which was then the subject of a lengthy legal dispute.⁶¹ The group may have been dispersed by 1650 and Millar has suggested that it may be identified with that seen by Lodewijck Huygens when in London on 9 January 1652, as recorded in his diary: ‘… we saw a painting of H.H. Prince William and the Princess Royal by Van Dyck which was painted from life when they were married here; he [the owner] said that it belonged to a nobleman but did not name him.’⁶² This work may have entered the English royal collection after 1660, and be the one recorded in the collection of King James II (1633-1701).⁶³ Its subsequent, and otherwise inexplicable, disappearance may have led to its inclusion as no. 25 in the Earl of Stanhope’s 1702 list of pictures claimed to have been removed from the English royal collection by King William III (1650-1702): ‘The prince & princesse of orange y [e] late k[ing]s fathers et mothers at length in one piece by van dyke’;⁶⁴ no further light has been shed on the whereabouts of the picture Huygens saw.

Another version (improbably that seen by Huygens in London in 1652) is recorded in the 1681 inventory of Princess Albertina Agnes van Nassau-Orange (1634-1691), daughter of Frederik Hendrik and Amalia van Solms, and the widow of Prince Willem Frederik van Nassau-Dietz (1613-1664): at Leeuwarden castle, as no. 878, ‘Een lang conterfeitsel van prince Wilh. van Oranjen en deselfs gemaelinne, de pr. royale, geschildert bij Van Dijk’.⁶⁵ It was incorrectly identified with the present picture in the museum catalogue of 1960; the present whereabouts of this picture, most likely a studio copy of the Rijksmuseum painting as well, is also unknown.⁶⁶

Prince Willem exercised his father’s office as stadholder for only three years after the latter’s death and died during a confrontation with the city of Amsterdam in 1650. Mary, known as the Princess Royal from 1642, had performed her prime function by bearing him a son and heir three days after his death. This was the future William III, Stadholder and King of England, Ireland and Scotland. She remained in the Netherlands during the Commonwealth; unpopular and on bad terms with her mother-in-law, she provided assistance to her exiled brothers, the future Kings Charles II (1630-1685) and James II. She died in London in 1660 not long after the restoration of Charles II to the throne.

Gregory Martin, 2022