Princess Henrietta, known as ‘Minette’, was Charles I’s youngest child, named after her mother, Henrietta Maria. Born during the Civil War, she spent her childhood in exile in France with her mother at the court of Louis XIV and in 1661 (just after the Restoration) she married the King’s brother, Philippe of France, Duke of Orléans (also called ‘Monsieur’). She was a great patron of the arts and ardent Catholic, helping to forge the secret Anglo-French Alliance against the Protestant Dutch Republic, which was sealed at the Treaty of Dover in 1670. The Duchess of Orleans died in that year, said by many to have been poisoned. Her Catholic grandson, Charles Emmanuel III (1701-73), later Duke of Savoy and King of Sardinia, would have had a strong dynastic claim to the English throne, but was excluded by the Act of Settlement of 1701 which required the monarch to be Protestant.

This portrait was painted in France soon after her marriage by a French artist: the name Jean Nocret (1615-72) has been suggested. The Duchess is shown as Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, probably in order to celebrate her patronage of the arts. She wears a plumed gold helmet, a spear in her left hand and her right upon a gold shield. Minerva's 'aegis' - a gold cloth with a gorgon's head - is draped across her breast.