About Thursday 17 May 1660

Rembrandts Room blog on 10 Sep 2015  •  Link

"... we went to see a house of the Princess Dowager’s in a park about half-a-mile or a mile from the Hague". The Princess Dowager is not Mary Stuart but Amalia van Solms (1602-1675), widow of Stadtholder Frederik Hendrik of Orange. It was she who commissioned Paleis Huis ten Bosch and the series of paintings dedicated to her husband in the central hall which Pepys was shown.
The painting Pepys describes: "one picture upon the top" (that is to say: in the center of the hall's cupola) "with these words, dedicating it to the memory of her husband:— “Incomparabili marito, inconsolabilis vidua” is this one by Gerard van Honthorst's workshop depicting Amalia van Solms as a widow with a skull. http://www.nwo.nl/binaries/paragr…