Beatriz van Hemmema, Countess of Oxford (formerly called Diana Cecil)

The museum has changed this woman's name. The portrait was for a long time called Diana Cecil, Countess of Oxford, and it now carries the name of Beatrix van Hemmema, who held the same title a few years later. The mix-up is easy to follow. Diana Cecil married the 18th Earl of Oxford, who died soon afterwards. Beatrix van Hemmema, from a Frisian family, married his successor Robert de Vere before 1626, and Robert was killed at Maastricht in 1632. That is worth knowing for the flower in her hand. A rose in a woman's portrait usually stood for fertility, and a withered rose, which this may well be, was read as a sign of widowhood. Van Dyck signed the canvas and dated it 1638 on the rock where her hands rest, a stone the museum takes as a possible emblem of her steadfastness. It entered the Spanish royal collection in 1745, from the collection of the duke of El Arco.