Frederick Henry, prince of Orange and stadtholder

Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange and Stadtholder, painted by Honthorst in 1625 and now in the Louvre, depicts the half-brother of William I of Orange who became the dominant figure in the Dutch Republic's military campaigns against Spain during the Thirty Years War. Frederick Henry (1584–1647) succeeded his brother Maurice as Stadtholder and Captain-General in 1625 — the same year as this portrait — and would go on to reconquer much of the eastern Netherlands from Spain. His court at The Hague became one of the most important cultural centres of the early seventeenth century, patronising Constantijn Huygens, Rembrandt, and a generation of Dutch artists. Honthorst's appointment as court portrait painter to the Orange family made him the visual chronicler of the most powerful political family in the Dutch Republic.

The portrait of the newly appointed Stadtholder would deploy the full vocabulary of military-political authority: armour, composed bearing, the direct gaze of a commander. Honthorst's daylight court portrait style — cleaner and more restrained than his early Caravaggesque nocturnal work — serves the requirements of official portraiture that must project authority without ambiguity. The treatment of armour, an occasion for technical virtuosity in the rendering of polished metal, would be a centrepiece of the composition.