On-line gallery
- Reference number
- P01481
- Author
- Dyck, Anton van (Flemish),
- Title
- Beatrice, Countess of Oxford
- Chronology
- 1638
- Technique
- Support
- Measures
- 107 cm x 86 cm
- School
- Theme
- Shown
- Yes
- Entrance
- COLECCION REAL
- Procedence
- Royal Collection
The wife of Robert de Vere, Count
of Oxford, wears a black dress in
the style popular in England in the
sixteen thirties. She is depicted
in a landscape or garden, in front
of an outcropping of rock. In her
hand is a rose, a clear allusion to
matrimony, which allows us to
assume that this portrait was
paired with another of her
husband.
The placement of the model in the
foreground, in front of a large
object —architecture, stone or
plant— with the vanishing point in
an open landscape at one side, is a
compositional solution
characteristic of the artist's
final period in England and was to
have an enormous influence on the
development of English portraiture
in the following centuries. The
work is signed and dated on the
boulder on which the Countess's
hands are resting, which may be a
symbol of fortitude.
In 1745, this painting entered the
Royal Collection from that of the
Duke of Arco.
Location on the map
