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5 - Louise Hollandine and the Art of Arachnean Critique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2020

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Abstract

Louise Hollandine was an artist and student of internationally renowned Dutch painter Gerard van Honthorst. Though relatively few works now survive that can be authoritatively ascribed to her, Louise Hollandine's artistic reputation is flatteringly memorialized in Richard Lovelace's seldom-remarked poem “Princesse Löysa Drawing.” “Princesse Löysa Drawing” reworks in surprising and nuanced ways the celebrated weaving contest between Arachne and Minerva from Book 6 of the Metamorphoses. After briefly establishing the broader social contexts in which both this Princess Palatine and Lovelace operated, this chapter presents a sustained literary analysis of “Princesse Löysa Drawing,” exploring both its intertextual, literary connections with Metamorphoses 6 and its relation to two Ovidian portraits historiés by Louise Hollandine, The Daughters of Cecrops and Vertumnus and Pomona.

Keywords: Louise Hollandine; Gerard van Honthorst; Richard Lovelace; Ovid; Arachne; cavalier poetry

Louise Hollandine (1622–1709), granddaughter to Britain's King James I (1566–1625) and “scion of the most staunchly Protestant branch of the Stuart dynasty” was born in The Hague. It was in this city that her parents, Frederick V, Elector Palatine and short-lived King of Bohemia (1596–1632) and Elizabeth Stuart (1596–1662), dwelt in exile following their flight from Prague in 1620. When Louise Hollandine is now remembered at all, it is usually for her intrepid social and religious transformation in the late 1650s from Protestant princess to runaway Catholic nun and eventual Abbess of Maubuisson in Paris. Yet she was also an artist, as we are reminded by a youthful self-portrait in which the princess meaningfully presents herself with a mahlstick in hand (Figure 5.1). Having received her childhood education primarily at her family's Prinsenhof, or nursery palace, in Leiden, Louise Hollandine is reputed to have begun drawing lessons at the age of six. Later, along with a number of her many siblings, she advanced her studies under the tutelage of Gerard van Honthorst (1590–1656). As the Memoirs of her younger sister Sophia of Hanover (1630–1714) detail, Louise Hollandine “completely devoted herself to painting” in her youth, and “so great was her talent that she could capture peoples’ likeness without them having to sit for her.” What is more, as a second self-portrait indicates, she continued these artistic pursuits even after taking the veil (Figure 5.2).

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Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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