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The Ballet de la Carmesse elegantly fulfils Constantijn Huygens’s requirements for a successful contribution to the glamorous lifestyle of his Orange and Stuart employers. Although there is no record of his attendance, we may picture his delight at the quality of the musicianship, and the elegance of the dancing by the court figures who participated. As Elizabeth reported to Charles II, ‘the subject your Majestie will see was not extraordinarie but it was verie well danced’.

At the conclusion of the ballet, the ‘Ladies’ ball’ began. When Dumanoir and his musicians once again struck up, Mary herself, followed by the high-ranking ladies in attendance, took the floor, and proceeded to dance the night away until four in the morning. From Dumanoir’s surviving suites of dance music we may imagine the gavottes, courantes, sarabandes, allemandes, bourrées and gigues they danced – all vigorous dances carried out to the heavily rhythmic beat of the orchestra of violins.

As we watch Constantijn Huygens mediate the traffic in musicians and fine instruments between Paris, London, Brussels, Antwerp and The Hague, we experience the process of international exchange under his tutelage, which resulted in the flowering of a coherent, continuous musical taste spanning these locations.31 The illusion of separation – of distinct centres of musical development to which we may attach the designations ‘Dutch’, ‘English’ or ‘French’ – is belied by the easy commerce in taste-forming opinions, performers, composers and instruments between these locations, even (as we shall see) at times when officially the participants’ countries of residence were at war. Musical historians have seen fit to judge Huygens a minor talent as a lyricist and composer, but that is not really the point. He presided over a formidable network of musical connoisseurs and practitioners, whose tastes and talents he ‘played’ with every bit as much virtuosity as the viol or the theorbo.

To close this chapter, let us return to that other vibrant centre of cultural activity in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, Antwerp, and to probably the most famous, and certainly the most successful, of the artists working in the region at that time – Pieter Paul Rubens. Rubens set style standards in Antwerp in fine art in the first half of the seventeenth century – his influence extending to acceptable types of composition, and cost per figure by the hand of the master, rather than his studio – and as a prominent member of the local community he also did so in other areas of luxury expenditure, in particular in architecture.

By 1615, Rubens and his family occupied one of the most architecturally distinguished houses in the whole of Antwerp. He had acquired what became known permanently as the Rubenshuis, on the Wapper canal, in 1610, thereby confirming and consolidating his reputation as the most successful artist in the area. Before he and his first wife Isabella moved in, he added an entire Italianate wing to the already extensive and fine-looking dwelling. The frontage of the resulting mansion stretched 120 feet, divided by a central gateway. To the left, the Flemish façade was broken by narrow rectangular windows, lead-paned and quartered. To the right, the middle- storey windows of the Italianate addition were handsomely arched and set in banded masonry frames. The large studio on the ground floor measured fully forty-six by thirty-four feet, and was thirty feet high – an impressive space in which to set up the large canvases on which Rubens and his artist- apprentices worked. The house also possessed the fashionably formal, classically themed Dutch garden which has already been noted, incorporating architectural features and antique statuary.

Again, this architectural project connects with the English émigrés in Antwerp. Between 1648 and 1660, an English family competed with the Duartes for the title of most lavish in its hospitality towards the English émigré community. This was the household of the émigré William Cavendish,