William II, Prince of Orange, and his Bride, Mary Stuart

Van Dyck painted this double portrait in London in 1641, and it was among the last things he did. He died that December. The two children are a marriage. On the left, in a rich doublet, is William, son of the Prince of Orange, aged 14. Beside him, holding his hand, is Mary Stuart, the nine-year-old daughter of Charles the First of England. Their families had joined the Dutch republic to the English crown in a wedding that spring. She wears a jewel he gave her, pinned at her breast. The English king who arranged the match would be executed eight years later, and the boy in the portrait would grow into the father of William the Third, the Dutch prince who took the English throne in 1688.