Portrait of Maria of Orange (1642-1688), with Hendrik van Nassau-Zuylestein (d. 1673) and a Servant

In the 1660s the House of Orange was out of power. The Dutch Republic was being run without a stadholder, and the family needed good marriages. Maria, the youngest daughter of Frederik Hendrik and Amalia van Solms, was painted by Jan Mijtens around 1665, shortly before her wedding to a German prince, Louis Henry of Simmern. The ceremony took place in Cleves, at the residence of Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen, the relative who had built the Mauritshuis.

She is dressed for riding in a man's suit with a cravat, an outfit that caused an outcry at the time. Beside her stands her young nephew Hendrik van Nassau-Zuylestein. The black boy on the other side was a servant at court whose name is not recorded. He was probably brought to the Republic by the Dutch West India Company as a present for the princess. The painting later went, probably by inheritance, to her sister's palace at Oranienstein in Germany, and in 1875 it was found in the attic of the Mauritshuis.