In 1607, the Delft city council decided to commission a portrait of Stadholder Maurits of Nassau for the town hall, with Michiel van Mierevelt as the chosen artist due to the passing of the previous court painter Dani�l van den Queborn. The receipt from 1608 revealed that Van Mierevelt received the substantial sum of 200 guilders for the painting, which was competed in 1607. He was also granted a six-year patent by the States-General for reproductions of the portrait in copperplate engravings, solidifying his position as the official court painter. Maurits, who was appointed stadholder after the murder of his father William of Orange, in 1584, was depicted at almost three-quarter length, wearing a richly decorated gold coloured suit of armour. The orange-red of his sash signify the House of Orange and the medallion of the Order of the Garter hangs from a ribbon on his chest.Van Mierevelt depicted the stadholder in a very natural pose and rendered details of the composition with utmost believability. The scene therefore makes a sharp contrast with the rather stiff portrait that Van der Queborn produced about nine years earlier. Van Mierevelt''s portrait was extremely successful: as early as 1607, the year of its completion, at least one replica was painted, for the States-General. In 1608 Jan Muller''s print of the painting appeared, for which Van Mierevelt had been granted a patent in 1607. Dozens of other portraits of Maurits from Van Mierevelt''s studio - busts, three-quarter and full-length likenesses show that the painter and his assistants probably turned-out hundreds of versions in the ensuing decades, of which our portrait is one such example. The basic concept remained the same throughout, although the facial features were sometimes modified to reflect Maurits''s advancing years; the stadholder probably did not pose for the painter again after 1607. After Delft built a new town hall in 1620, Van Mierevelt was commissioned to furnish it with four eq...