(Utrecht 1519–1575 Antwerp)
Portrait of Anna of Egmond (1533–1558), Countess of Buren, wife of William the Silent, Prince of Orange,
inscribed upper left: Printzessin von Orannien des von Beurn dochtter,
oil on panel, 109 x 84 cm, framed

We are grateful to Gloria Martínez-Leiva for her help in cataloguing the present painting.

On 6 July 1551, William the Silent, Prince of Orange, later considered the ‘Pater Patriae’ of the Netherlands and honoured to this day in the Dutch National Anthem, married Anna, daughter and heir of Count Maximiliaan van Egmond. The match had been secured by no other than Emperor Charles V. Anna’s father had died in 1548, and therefore William became Lord of Egmond and Count of Buren upon his wedding day. The marriage was to be a happy one. Just as Anna was one of the most eligible young heiresses in the Netherlands, her husband was at that time immensely popular and successful at the Imperial court in Brussels and a favourite of the emperor and his sister, Mary of Hungary.

William had been raised Lutheran at Dillenburg castle but, in 1544, his first agnatic cousin, René de Chalon, Prince of Orange (1519–1544), stadtholder of the Low Countries of Holland, had died childless and had left him his entire estate with the stipulation that he must convert to Roman Catholicism. Besides the Principality of Orange (located today in France) and significant lands in Germany, William also inherited vast estates in the Low Countries. Because of William’s young age, Emperor Charles V served as regent until William was old enough to rule them himself. William’s father agreed to the condition. William’s marriage to the catholic Anna of Egmond secured his high social standing. He was appointed captain in the cavalry in 1551 and received rapid promotion to army commander in the war with France. William was also made a member of the Raad van State, the highest political advisory council in the Netherlands. It was in November 1555 that Emperor Charles leaned on William’s shoulder during the ceremony when he abdicated the Low Countries in favour of his son, Philip II of Spain. William was also selected to carry the insignia of the Holy Roman Empire to Charles’s brother Ferdinand, when Charles resigned the imperial crown in 1556. William would only later turn into a rebel against the new King and unleash the struggle for independence in the Eighty Years’ War. Anna spent most of her days in the couples’ residence at Breda Castle, and only infrequently attended court in Brussels. However, she accompanied her husband to Brussels to receive the new King Philip II in 1555.

An important rediscovery, this painting would appear to be the only existing surviving original portrait of Anna of Egmond, and it seems to have been executed at the Habsburg court at around that time. A drawing in the Recueil d‘Arras which is very close in physiognomy, as well as the inscription clearly prove the identity of the present sitter. The Recueil d’ Arras is a mid-sixteenth century manuscript, tentatively attributed to the Netherlandish artist Jacques Le Boucq. The recueil comprises of 293 paper folios, of which 289 contain copies of portraits of named historical people.

The present painting is undoubtedly related to a group of portraits in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Kassel. The first one is a Portrait of William I (inv. no. GK 37, oil on panel, 105 x 82.1 cm), the second is a Portrait of Anna of Lorraine, the widow of René of Orange who had named William his successor (inv. no. GK 926, oil on panel, 106.8 x 82 cm). The other two are the Portrait of Rainaud III de Brederode, Count of Holland and chamberlain to Emperor Charles V (inv. no. SM 1.1.938, oil on panel, 114 x 89.5 cm) and the Portrait of a Noble Knave (inv. no. GK 39, oil on panel, 105 x 82.2 cm). All four portraits of the Kassel group, as well as the present painting, appear to have once formed part of a late Renaissance ‘Fürsten-Galerie’ and have remarkably similar sizes and mediums. All portraits, including the present painting, but excluding the portrait of a Noble Knave, feature German identifications in an almost identical lettering in their upper parts. The portrait of the unknown Knave, however, like the present painting, features a window in the background surrounded by a similarly plain and unmodelled dark architectural wall, and with a similar handling of the sky.

The early provenance of the series in Kassel is not known. It was most probably commissioned by William of Orange himself or the Nassau family, and not the Hessian landgraves. A plausible date of entry into the Hessian collections would appear to be 1603, when Maurice, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, married Juliane of Nassau-Siegen (see B. Schnackenburg, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Gesamtkatalog, Staatliche Museen Kassel, Mainz 1996, pp. 190–191). Furthermore, the portrait of William in the series features, in his German inscription, the title of the wealthy County of ‘Katzenellenbogen’, a fief that was contested between the houses of Hesse and Nassau – Nassau never officially relinquishing it, despite it having passed to the Hesse Family in 1557. A series originally made for the Hessian court would most likely not have featured an inscription contradicting the territorial claims of the commissioning dynasty. It is therefore much more plausible that the series was originally painted for the Nassau family and later entered the Hessian collections by descent. The group, and thus the present painting, was therefore most probably executed during the mid-1550s, perhaps on the occasion of Philips II ascension in Brussels in 1555. A dendrochronological analysis carried out by Peter Klein on the portrait of William concluded a plausible date of execution after 1552.

The proposed date of execution would be entirely in keeping with the extremely elaborate and elegant dress the Princess of Orange is wearing, befitting her high status as one of the richest and most senior nobles of the imperial court. Anna is depicted wearing a Spanish farthingale, a stiff, conical shaped underskirt that became popular in the early sixteenth century and remained fashionable until the end of the century. Over this, Anna is wearing a kirtle, a supportive underdress made with luxurious silk, which is accentuated by a row of pearls in the centre. The black dress features a central piping in ermine running down the chest and following both sides of the central parting of the overskirt. The square neckline of the dress is decorated in embroidered gold brocade, which features large pearls sewn on in a geometrical pattern, and a small-ruffled lace undercollar that Anna is also wearing in the drawing in the Recueil d’Arras. The large false undersleeves in translucent lace are another elaborate detail, as are the conical shaped false sleeves in ermine that would be tied in the dress. The Princess is wearing a so-called ‘French hood’ that covers most of her hair, and which is again richly decorated with bands of pearls and a gold embroidered Bongrace, a sort of visor-like feature of the hood. A black veil, suspended straight from the hood, covers the back of her hair. Around her neck, she is wearing a triple row pearl necklace tied together at the front, whilst around her waist a belt made up of gold and pearls is shown. Richly decorated bracelets worn over her ruffled cuffs, and no less than six stone-encrusted rings and a pair of chamois leather gloves complete what can only be considered an extremely luxurious dress.

Remarkably, there are no other surviving contemporary portraits of Anna of Egmond. A prototype in a small panel format with a highly standardised physiognomy must have existed, as a large number of copies testify. A version with an inscription identifying the sitter is in the Royal Collections of the Netherlands, The Hague (inv. no. SC-0069). Another version is in the Museum of the Chartreuse de Douai (oil on panel, 28 x 22 cm), whilst others are in the Palazzo Ducale, Mantua and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (inv. no. WAG 827), or in private collections. It has been suggested that these portraits are also based on a lost original by Anthonis Mor. However, no traces of such an original have been discovered. Whilst the smaller portrait type differs in some aspects of the dress, the black and white colour scheme is comparable.

The four paintings in Kassel have for a long time been attributed to Anthonis Mor van Dashorst, some of them, like the portraits of the Count of Brederode and of Anna of Lorraine with possible workshop participation. Mor was the most influential painter active at the Habsburg courts at the time. Tentative attributions to the workshop of Willem Key in Breda have in the past also been suggested. Comparing the details of the present sitters’ hands and cuffs with that of Mors’ portrait of Queen Mary Tudor in the Prado (in a very similar format, oil on panel, 109 x 84 cm, inv. no. P002108), there are obvious parallels, but also differences. For a large commission such as a whole series Mor certainly had to rely on the support of his assistants. Mor had just returned from Spain in 1555, quite likely travelling with the entourage of King Philipp II. Gloria Martínez-Leiva concludes that differences in quality and conservation within the group and in comparison with the present painting exist, which point to a hypothetical workshop participation.