Portrait of Maurits, Prince of Orange-Nassau

In 1607 the Delft city fathers commissioned the Delft portraitist Michiel van Miereveld to paint a portrait of the Dutch stadholder Prince Maurits (1567-1625). Van Miereveld went to The Hague to record his subjects’s features and produced this portrait of the prince in armour, with sword and baton, representing his role as captain general of the Dutch army. This picture became the model for all the later portraits of the prince. (A full-length version of this portrait from 1615-20 is now in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.) The portrait was engraved by Jan Muller in 1608and, like countless copies from Van Mireveld’s workshop, hung in homes throughout the Netherlands. A bust-length version of the 1607 composition hangs above the fireplace in A Man Weighing Gold by Cornelis de Man.