Henrietta of Lorraine by van Dyck

Kenwood House Volunteer, Tamara Rabin, gives an online talk on Henrietta of Lorraine (1605 -1660), whose portrait ‘Princess Henrietta of Lorraine attended by a Page’ by Anthony van Dyck, is part of the great art collection at Kenwood House, London.
Van Dyck painted this full-length portrait in 1634, and an equivalent one of Henrietta’s sister, Margaret of Lorraine who, two years earlier in 1632, had secretly married Gaston, duc d’Orléans, younger brother of King Louis XIII of France.
Tamara Rabin tells the tale of how Henrietta openly defied France’s invasion of the Duchy of Lorraine, instigated by Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu; she and her sister fled to Brussels, and then to Antwerp, where they spent time with another exile, Margaret’s mother-in-law, Marie de Medici. Henrietta seems to have been a resourceful, strong woman about whom little is known; she had three or four husbands (opinions vary), she returned to Neufchâteau in Lorraine in 1653, where she died in 1660.
Music: ‘Ballet de la Merlaison,’ a ‘ballet de cour’, written by Louis XIII and first performed at the Château de Chantilly in 1635. Louis XIII was brother-in-law to Henrietta’s sister, Margaret of Lorraine.
Produced by Friends of Kenwood
www.friendsofkenwood.org.uk