Prince Charles Louis, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, and Duke of Bavaria (1617–1680)

Prince Charles Louis, Elector Palatine of the Rhine (1617–1680), painted by Honthorst in 1638 and held by the National Trust, depicts the eldest surviving son of Frederick V and Elizabeth Stuart at twenty-one, six years before his father's Lower Palatine territories were restored to him by the Peace of Westphalia. Charles Louis spent much of his youth and young adulthood in England at the court of his uncle Charles I, and this portrait — made when he was twenty-one — captures him at the beginning of his independent political life. He would eventually be partially restored in 1648, governing the Lower Palatinate until his death, and his daughter Liselotte would become Duchesse d'Orléans. Honthorst painted Charles Louis at various points in his life, creating a portrait record of the prince's evolution from exiled youth to restored elector.

At twenty-one, Charles Louis would be presented with the full apparatus of dynastic portraiture — fine dress, composed bearing, the direct gaze of a man claiming political identity despite his family's displacement. Honthorst's panel support at this date (rather than canvas) indicates a deliberate choice for a higher-quality, more durable format appropriate to a formal dynastic portrait. His daylight technique, clear and precise, serves the documentary function of such commissions.