Princess Louise Hollandine, Princess Palatine, Abbess of Maubuisson, Pontoise (1622–1709)

Louise Hollandine, Princess Palatine (1622–1709) was the third daughter of Frederick V and Elizabeth Stuart and, unusually for a princess of her generation, an accomplished painter herself — a pupil of Honthorst and Gerard van Honthorst's Utrecht circle. This 1650 portrait, now at Ashdown House in Berkshire (a National Trust property built by William Craven for Elizabeth of Bohemia), is part of the extensive pictorial record Honthorst created for the Palatine family. Louise Hollandine later converted to Catholicism and became abbess of Maubuisson near Pontoise, a remarkable trajectory from Calvinist princess to French abbess. The Ashdown House context is significant: Craven's patronage of Honthorst served to preserve the visual memory of the exiled Stuarts and Palatines in English aristocratic settings, creating a gallery of dynastic portraiture far from the courts these families had lost.

Canvas support suited to the three-quarter or full-length format Honthorst used for female court portraits. His handling here balances the dignity appropriate to a princess with the softness conventionally required for female likenesses. The rendering of silk, jewels, and hair would receive meticulous attention as carriers of dynastic and personal status.