Allegory on Archduke Leopold Wilhelm (1614-1662)

Seven women surround the archduke in this small canvas, and each is a virtue. The museum names them as Honour, Virtue, Christian Peace, Fame, Chastity, Fortitude and Prudence, the qualities Leopold Wilhelm, brother of the Emperor Ferdinand III, wanted attached to his name. Around 1650 he was governor of the Spanish Netherlands, based in Brussels, where he was also buying paintings on a vast scale, and much of that collection is in this museum today. Christian Peace had a particular edge in those years. The Peace of Westphalia had ended the Thirty Years' War in 1648, while the war between France and Spain went on across the archduke's own provinces. The Kunsthistorisches Museum gives the painting to Jan van den Hoecke, an Antwerp painter who worked at Leopold Wilhelm's court.