Elizabeth FitzGerald, Countess of Kildare
Willem Wissing
ca. 1684
Elizabeth FitzGerald (née Jones) was born into a prominent Anglo-Irish family. Her father, the Earl of Ranelagh, was a dissolute rake, eventually impeached for misappropriating government funds to support his lifestyle, while her mother’s wealth was derived from the slave-based economy in the new colony of Barbados. In this portrait, Willem Wissing depicts the sitter in the benign guise of a shepherdess tending to her flock while dressed in sumptuous textiles, coy and demure in an imagined Arcadian landscape that blurs the lines between fantasy and reality. It is likely that this portrait commemorates her marriage to the Earl of Kildare, another member the Irish aristocracy, in 1684, a match that proved childless.
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven · Image: Yale Center for British Art, Public domain · Text: Yale Center for British Art, CC0