Portrait of Margaret of Lorraine

Margaret of Lorraine was about 18 when she sat for this full-length portrait in Brussels in 1634, and already at the centre of a diplomatic mess. Two years earlier she had married Gaston, Duke of Orleans and younger brother of King Louis XIII of France, in a secret night-time ceremony at Nancy. Gaston was living in exile in the Spanish Netherlands after plotting against the French crown, and Louis refused to recognise the marriage. So the teenage duchess sat for van Dyck abroad, among her husband's hosts rather than at any French court. He paints her at full height, the standing format he kept for his highest-ranking sitters. The couple would have to marry twice more before the crown finally accepted the union, the last time in 1643, as Louis lay dying.