William II, Prince of Orange, and his Bride, Mary Stuart, Anthony van Dyck, 1641 – (Anthony Van Dyck) ◄ Předchozí Další ►

Umělec: Anthony Van Dyck

Datum: 1641

Velikost: 180 x 132 cm

Technika: Oil On Canvas

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../..