Empress Doña Margarita de Austria in Mourning Dress

The young woman in black here is the same child who stands at the centre of Velazquez's Las Meninas, grown into her teens. This portrait was painted by Juan Bautista Martinez del Mazo, Velazquez's son-in-law, who took over as court painter in Madrid after the older man died. Margarita is in full mourning. Her father, King Philip IV, had died in September 1665, which helps fix the date, and she was about to leave Spain for good to marry the emperor in Vienna. The picture was meant to stay behind in Madrid as a keepsake of how she looked before she went. It was one of Mazo's last works. He was dead within two years, and the sitter herself would live only to 21.