Princess Henrietta of Lorraine (1611–1660), Attended by a Page

In March 1634 van Dyck gave up his post as painter to Charles I in London and went back to the Southern Netherlands. He spent the next nine months in Brussels, where a court of French and Lorraine exiles had gathered. Henrietta of Lorraine was one of them. Her younger sister Marguerite had secretly married Gaston, the brother of the French king Louis XIII, and Louis treated that match as a threat to his crown.

Van Dyck painted Henrietta full length, attended by a young Black page in red velvet and gold jewellery, holding out a basket of roses he has been helping her gather. Her hand rests on his shoulder. He was a real child in her household, and his name was never written down. A servant like him went into a portrait of this kind to show how far the sitter's wealth reached.

The picture has hung at Kenwood in north London since 1928, among the 63 works the Guinness brewer Lord Iveagh left to the nation.