Electress Palatine Dancing with Her Husband

In 1693 French troops blew up Heidelberg Castle, the old seat of the Palatine electors, and the court that came through that war kept to the Rhine at Düsseldorf instead. Two years later its court painter signed this small canvas on the painted step at the lower right, JF. Douven Pinxit 1695. It shows the Elector Johann Wilhelm dancing with his second wife, Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici. They are in costume, and the museum's old frame label says no more than that, the Elector and Electress Palatine in costume. Jan Frans van Douven had come from Roermond in 1682 and painted this household for more than 30 years, its dances and its ordinary hours as readily as its state portraits. The canvas measures about 56 by 42 centimetres, made to be looked at close up rather than hung down a gallery wall.