Equestrian Portrait of Prince Balthasar Charles

Velázquez painted this around 1634 for the Hall of Realms, a new throne room in Madrid's Buen Retiro palace hung with portraits of the reigning family on horseback. The rider is Balthasar Charles, heir to the Spanish crown, about five or six years old, sitting very upright on a plump pony with a commander's baton in his hand. His portrait was made to hang high above a doorway, between the larger equestrian portraits of his parents, which is why he is tipped up toward us and the pony seems to charge slightly uphill. The whole point of the picture was the future it promised. That heir never came. Balthasar Charles died at 16, and the throne passed elsewhere.