In 1645, Amalia van Solms, Princess of Orange, was faced with a dilemma. Her husband, stadholder and Prince of Orange, Frederik Hendrik, was in failing health. Amalia knew that following his death she would lose both her political influence and her right to reside in the palaces that she and Frederik Hendrik had built and decorated during their twenty-two years of marriage. Her solution to both problems was the construction and decoration of the palace now called Huis ten Bosch. The palace, built and decorated between 1645 and 1652, is a small brick villa suburbana outside of The Hague. Designed by the architect Pieter Post, Huis ten Bosch is one of the major monuments of Dutch Classicism. The best known component of the complex is the Oranjezaal, a central cruciform reception hall covered in a cycle of paintings celebrating the life and virtues of the Prince of Orange, ostensibly in funereal tribute. The rest of the building and its surrounding gardens have been significantly altered over time and no longer exist in their seventeenth-century forms. As a result, the scholarship on the site is overly focused on the paintings at the expense of an examination of the spatial experience of the site. Considered together with the garden as a holistic experience for a mobile viewer, the paintings and palace not only commemorate the Prince, but more importantly, emphasize the critical role of the fidelity and fertility of the Princess in the Dutch Republic more broadly.