Louise Hollandine and the Art of Arachnean Critique

Abstract

Louise Hollandine was an artist and student of internationally renowned Dutch painter Gerard van Honthorst. Though relatively few works now survive that can be authoritatively ascribed to her, Louise Hollandine s artistic reputation is flatteringly memorialized in Richard Lovelace s seldom-remarked poem Princesse Löysa Drawing. Princesse Löysa Drawing reworks in surprising and nuanced ways the celebrated weaving contest between Arachne and Minerva from Book 6 of Ovid's Metamorphoses. After briefly establishing the broader social contexts in which both this Princess Palatine and Lovelace operated, this chapter presents a sustained literary analysis of Princesse Löysa Drawing, exploring both its intertextual, literary connections with Metamorphoses 6 and its relation to two Ovidian portraits historiés by Louise Hollandine, The Daughters of Cecrops and Vertumnus and Pomona.