Ludvig VI, 1630-78, lantgreve av Hessen-Darmstadt

This 1665 portrait by Salomon Duarte — also known as Salomon Duward or Duwart — depicts Ludvig VI, Landgrave of Hessen-Darmstadt (1630–1678), a German nobleman who governed the Hessian territory during a period of post-Thirty Years' War reconstruction. Painted when Duarte was in his late forties, the work falls squarely within his active career and reflects the formal conventions of mid-17th-century European aristocratic portraiture. Duarte was a Dutch-influenced painter working in the Baroque tradition, and his portraits were prized for their dignified rendering of status and power. The portrait would have served both a commemorative and a political function, asserting Ludvig VI's legitimacy and authority as ruler. Held in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, this work is part of a broader tradition of court portraiture that circulated among the intermarried royal and noble houses of northern Europe, cementing diplomatic and dynastic identities across borders.