Flemish School around 1620 / 25, Portrait of Marguerite de Lalaing, Comtesse de Berlaymont Oil on canvas (relined) Marguerite de Lalaing (1574 - 1651) came from one of the oldest families in Hainaut. In 1593 she married Count Florent de Berlaymont, who played an important role in the Spanish Netherlands after the unexpected death of the governor, Archduke Ernst. He was succeeded by Archduke Albert, to whom Philip II gave his own daughter, Infanta Isabella, as a wife. Florent and Marguerite remained loyal to the governors from the House of Habsburg throughout their lives. The Berlaymont convent was founded in 1625 by Marguerite Lalaing with the support of her husband Florent de Berlaymont as an Augustinian convent. After being dispossessed, the canonesses established a new convent in 1864 in the Rue de la Loi in Brussels. In 1960, they sold the site to the Belgian state, which built the administrative building of the European Union here, which has since been called "Berlaymont". The nuns moved to Argenteuil, a southern suburb of Brussels, and founded the new Berlaymont Convent. 203 x 124 cm Flemish School around 1620 / 25 From the de Berlaymont Convent, Brussels.