Van Dyck's painting of Sir Kenelm Digby's beloved wife borrows the techniques of society portraiture to capture the pervasiveness of sickness and early death in the pre-medical world.

When his beloved wife the famous beauty Venetia Stanley died suddenly in her sleep in 1633, Sir Kenelm Digby called in Van Dyck to portray her. Van Dyck shows her as if she might be sleeping. Only her deathly pallor gives away the truth. At this time Van Dyck, an artist from Antwerp, was establishing himself as the glamorous portraitist of the English court and aristocracy. Here he captures the tragic pervasiveness of sickness and death in a pre-medical world.