Maurice de Bavière, prince palatin

Maurice de Bavière, prince palatin, painted by Honthorst in 1640 and held in the Louvre, depicts the fifth son of Frederick V and Elizabeth Stuart — a prince whose life was consumed by military service. Maurice (1620–1652) served as a military commander, first in the Dutch army and later in the Royalist forces during the English Civil War, before dying at sea. In 1640 he was twenty, newly entering his military career, and this Louvre portrait captures him at the beginning of a life of action that would end violently twelve years later. Honthorst's Louvre group of Palatinate family portraits forms one of the most coherent visual records of the diaspora of a displaced European dynasty.

A portrait of a young military man in 1640 would deploy the conventional vocabulary of martial portraiture: armour or military dress, assertive pose, direct gaze. Honthorst's panel support for some of these Palatinate portraits indicates a choice for durability appropriate to works intended as lasting dynastic records. His daylight court technique provides the clear, unambiguous illumination suited to the genre.