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Lot Essay
Oliver Millar, loc. cit., compares this picture with the monumental court allegory of Apollo and Diana of 1628, commissioned by King Charles I of England for the Banqueting House, Whitehall. Following his return to Utrecht in 1629, Honthorst executed another commission for King Charles I, a large historical portrait of Frederick V, King of Bohemia, and his Queen, Elizabeth Stuart, Daughter of James I, and their Children. The success of these works were important factors in Honthorst's move away from the flagging form of Utrecht Caravaggism, towards the style of decorative court painting that was to culminate in his work for Amalia van Solms in the Huis ten Bosch.
By the early 1630s, Honthorst was firmly established in the courtly circles of The Hague. In 1637, presumably due to his increasing work for the House of Orange Nassau, he moved to The Hague, becoming Dean of the Guild of St. Luke on 1640. The courts of the stadholder, Frederik Hendrik, and of the exiled King and Queen of Bohemia, were the centres of the impetus behind Arcadian and mythological themes in Dutch painting of the time. The principal theme was the sovereignty of love and beauty, and within this artists treated in particular the loves of the gods, and the pursuit of love in Arcadia. Honthorst had treated this theme before, for example in the Granida and Daifilo of 1625 (Centraal Museum, Utrecht, no. 5571), which may be a gift to Frederik Hendrik and Amalia van Solms for their wedding that year.
The detailed representation of the faces of the central characters in this picture suggests that this is an allegorical portrait, along the model of the Apollo and Diana, in the manner of the above-mentioned courtly style. The fact that there is a definite physical resemblance of the two portraits to members of the royal house of the Rhine, suggests an identification of the sitters as Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia, the Winter Queen, and either Prince Rupert or Prince Maurice of the Rhine. The date of the picture, 1641, the year that those two princes left for England to fight in the Civil War, might explain the subject matter of the allegory.
By the early 1630s, Honthorst was firmly established in the courtly circles of The Hague. In 1637, presumably due to his increasing work for the House of Orange Nassau, he moved to The Hague, becoming Dean of the Guild of St. Luke on 1640. The courts of the stadholder, Frederik Hendrik, and of the exiled King and Queen of Bohemia, were the centres of the impetus behind Arcadian and mythological themes in Dutch painting of the time. The principal theme was the sovereignty of love and beauty, and within this artists treated in particular the loves of the gods, and the pursuit of love in Arcadia. Honthorst had treated this theme before, for example in the Granida and Daifilo of 1625 (Centraal Museum, Utrecht, no. 5571), which may be a gift to Frederik Hendrik and Amalia van Solms for their wedding that year.
The detailed representation of the faces of the central characters in this picture suggests that this is an allegorical portrait, along the model of the Apollo and Diana, in the manner of the above-mentioned courtly style. The fact that there is a definite physical resemblance of the two portraits to members of the royal house of the Rhine, suggests an identification of the sitters as Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia, the Winter Queen, and either Prince Rupert or Prince Maurice of the Rhine. The date of the picture, 1641, the year that those two princes left for England to fight in the Civil War, might explain the subject matter of the allegory.