Amalia de Solms-Braunfels

The sitter is Amalia von Solms-Braunfels, who lived from 1602 to 1675 and was the wife of Frederick Henry of Nassau, prince of Orange and the man commanding Dutch armies against Spain. The portrait was made around 1631 or 1632, in the middle of that war, and about a century later it was hanging in a Spanish royal palace. She is in black with a broad French collar, two loops of pearls and a choker, a brooch, a ring, pearl bracelets, the wardrobe of the first lady of the House of Nassau. The image was copied and reissued as prints until it became her standard likeness. On the question of who actually painted this one, the Prado notes that the attribution rests on a 1745 inventory of Queen Isabel de Farnesio's collection, where it and its companion portrait of her husband are listed as works by Van Dyck. It is painted on canvas that was then laid down on a wooden panel.