Portrait of Ernest Casimir of Nassau-Dietz (1573–1632), oil on panel, 61 x 45.7 cm, original 17th-century frame

Count Ernest Casimir of Nassau-Dietz attended the universities of Herborn, Basel, and Geneva. In 1594, he entered the Dutch military service at the court of his elder brother, William Louis, the stadtholder of Friesland. Having meanwhile advanced to the rank of general, Ernest Casimir became the stadtholder of Utrecht in 1610. In 1620, he was made stadtholder-general of Friesland, Groningen, and Drenthe. When the Nassau-Ottonian lands were divided, he received the county of Dietz and thus became the ancestor of a new family line whose direct descendants still hold the Dutch throne. The present painting shows him as stadtholder of Friesland, who lived in the magnificent residence at Leeuwarden. The present picture was painted by Wybrand de Geest, probably the most important Frisian portraitist of the 17th Century. Here the count is still younger than in the full-length portrait in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which is also by the hand of de Geest (and which is generally considered a posthumous portrait of the sitter, who died in 1632). It also resembles an earlier type of painting as far as the treatment of the lace ruff is concerned. The present likeness therefore seems to be datable to the early 1620s. Wybrand de Geest was trained by his father and then entered the workshop of Abraham Bloemaert. Between 1614 and 1618, the artist sojourned in Rome, where he was nicknamed “De Friesche Adelaar”. In 1622, he married Hendrickje Uylenburgh, the niece of Rembrandt’s wife Saskia. That same year, he was appointed court painter to the stadtholder at Leeuwarden.