Christina of Sweden on Horseback

Antonio Pimentel was Philip IV's envoy at the Swedish court, and before he left Stockholm he asked Queen Christina for a large portrait of herself to take home to his king. This is that picture, painted by Sebastien Bourdon, whom Christina had made her first court painter, and dated by the Prado to 1653 and 1654. The gift was not a courtesy. Christina was quietly preparing to give up the Swedish throne and convert to Catholicism, and Spain was the power she wanted behind her in Rome. She abdicated in 1654. Bourdon shows her on a heavy bay lifting off its forelegs, in a plain riding coat with a switch in her hand, a page behind her holding a hooded falcon, and three hounds crowding the corner. The big white dog wears a studded collar with letters on it, read as Pimentel's own initials. By 1666 the canvas was hanging in the Alcazar in Madrid, in the room where the king had his supper.