Portrait of Mary Villiers, Lady Herbert of Shurland

In January 1636 a boy of fifteen died of smallpox. His name was Charles, Lord Herbert of Shurland, and he had been married about a year to the girl in this portrait. Charles I had arranged the match himself. She was 14 when van Dyck painted her, already a widow, holding a rose turned downward, her other hand at the black mourning ribbons pinned to a gold satin dress.

She was Mary Villiers, daughter of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, the king's favourite, who was stabbed to death at Portsmouth in 1628 when she was six. Charles brought her up in his own household afterwards, and this picture went into his collection. Abraham van der Doort, who catalogued the king's paintings, entered it as a piece of the Duchess of Lennox before she was married, naming her by the title she took in 1637 on marrying the king's cousin.

Van Dyck painted her again about a year later, in white, as Saint Agnes. That picture is still in the Royal Collection. This one came down through the earls of Dartmouth and reached San Diego in 2005.