Bust of Princess Anne of Hannover (1709-1759)

Anne of Hanover came to the Dutch Republic in 1734 as the bride of William IV of Orange, a king's daughter marrying a prince. She was the eldest daughter of the British king George II. In 1736 Jan Baptist Xavery, who had carved her husband's bust three years earlier, made this one of her in the same white marble, as its pendant.

The pair stood for a long time in the Oranjezaal, the domed central hall of the Orange palace of Huis ten Bosch in the woods at The Hague, and came to the Mauritshuis in 1816. Anne outlived her husband, and after his death in 1751 she governed as regent for their three-year-old son, William V, until she died in 1759.