Porträt Friedrich Heinrich von Oranien (1584-1647)

Portrait of Friedrich Heinrich of Orange. The Dutch governor is portrayed as a half-figure at a young age. He put his arms in the sides. His kind gaze meets the viewer. It presents itself here with semi-bare, natural hair and chin or mustache. In addition, he wears an armor with shoulder-wide pointed collar. To the right behind him is a curtain. To the left behind him you get a view from a window or even a painting with warlike representations. The battle is raging. The portrait is oval. A crowned coat of arms can be seen at the top left above the portrait; on the other hand a laurel wreath with internal writing: “honi soit qua maly pense.” Friedrich Heinrich of Orange was governor of the United Netherlands from 1625 until his death. At the Eighty Years“War he fought with him on the front, while at the Thirty Years” War he stayed out and supported King Gustav Adolf only financially from 1631. His daughter, Luise Henriette of Orange, married the Elector Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg, of whom the Händel-Haus Foundation also owns a leaf (cf. BS-III 405). The template for this sheet was a painting by the Flemish painter Anton van Dyck (1599-1641), who portrayed the prince in Holland between 1629 and 1630, which also fits well with the age of the depicted. Many stechers have stabbed Dyck’s painting, which is now in the Prado National Museum in Madrid, including Matthaeus Merian d.Ä. (1593-1650), who created this portrait for a publication by Cornelis Danckaert in 1642, which is very close to the present one. In the paper it was noted that Balthazar Moncornet (1598-1668), who at that time worked as a copper engraver and publisher in Paris, made the sheet, which in turn means that he could have stabbed it and printed it. Another specimen of the engraving is now in the Berlin State Library, it was even hand-colored afterwards. Signature: B. Moncornet excu. Caption: FRED. HENRY, PAR LA GRACE DE DIEV PRINCE D 'ORENGE, COMTE DE NASSAV, ETC. MARQVIS DE LA VERE ET VLISSENGE, BARON DE BREDA GRAVE &. (Stiftung Händel-Haus Halle Foundation)