Artwork Information

This print was made after a double-portrait (the so-called ‘Madagascar Portrait’) of the Earl and Countess of Arundel painted by Anthony van Dyck in 1639. The title refers to the earl’s unrealised plan to colonise the African island of Madagascar. Hollar’s Latin inscription refers to Alethea as the ‘premier countess of England’. But Arundel’s wife had lived in exile in Amsterdam since 1641, estranged from her husband. Like many royalists, she spent her remaining years away from her homeland, dying in 1654.