Mariana of Austria, Queen Regent

Philip IV of Spain died in 1665 and left the throne to a sickly boy of three. His widow, Mariana of Austria, governed in his name for ten years, and Carreño painted her around 1670 in the middle of that job. She sits in the Hall of Mirrors of the Alcázar in Madrid, the room where the king received ambassadors, at a table with papers, an inkstand and a quill, one hand resting on the sheet she has been writing.

The dress is the mourning of a Spanish court widow, white wimple and black veil, which she never took off again. It is easy to read all that gloom as a dynasty running down. That is a later idea. For the people in the room the mirrors, the dark pictures and the tall window meant continuity and power, and the canvas hanging behind her, hard to make out now, is a Judith holding the head of Holofernes.

The room itself is gone. The Alcázar burned down on Christmas night in 1734.