Allegory on the memory of Frederik Hendrik (1584-1647), prince of Orange, with the portrait of his widow Amalia van Solms

Seven years after Frederik Hendrik died, his widow was still building his memorial in paint. Amalia of Solms had already had the domed central hall of Huis ten Bosch, her palace in the woods outside The Hague, covered with scenes of his triumphs. In 1654 she ordered this canvas from the Amsterdam painter Govert Flinck for the large cabinet in the east wing, where it hung facing an Annunciation.

She sits in black with a book open in her lap, probably the life of her husband published by the historian Isaac Commelin. A woman in green, Hope, kneels before her with an anchor and a sprig of orange. Behind them the prince lies in armour on an imagined tomb, and at the back a phoenix rises from its ashes. By then their son Willem II was dead too and the provinces had left the office of stadholder empty, so the bird stood for the family's hopes in her small grandson, Willem III.

The canvas, more than three metres tall, belongs to the Rijksmuseum and has been on loan since 1998 to the Mauritshuis, which hangs it in the Gallery Prince Willem V.