Affectionate sister, most faithful friend

Abstract

In May of 1630, the exiled Queen of Bohemia, Elizabeth Stuart, sent a large painting to her brother, King Charles I of England. The work, a now-lost family portrait known since 1966 as Seladon and Astraea, was completed by the Dutch artist Gerrit van Honthorst. That this painting took Honoré d’Urfé’s pastoral romance L’Astrée as its source material has been proposed since the 1960s. This article argues for L’Astrée as an important part of Elizabeth and her husband’s self-identity in exile, and for Honthorst’s painting as a vital and overlooked token of friendship between both Elizabeth and her husband and Elizabeth and her brother. Drawing on early modern and ancient theorizations of friendship, kinship, and marriage as well as Elizabeth, Charles, and her husband Frederick’s letters, this article places Honthorst’s painting at the center of a complex network of reciprocal affection, political machinations, and court culture in the seventeenth century.