Philip IV in Armour, with a Lion at his Feet

X-rays and technical study have found an earlier picture under this one. The king's head once turned the other way, his hair was shorter and his face younger. The right side of the canvas opened onto a stone balustrade and a wide landscape, and the curtain behind him was smaller. The armour he wears, the sash and the general's baton in his hand belong to the late 1630s, the years of the equestrian portraits and of the Surrender of Breda, where Spinola wears much the same steel. The Prado dates the repainting to the mid 1660s, which is thirty years later and after Philip the Fourth was dead. The landscape was closed off, most likely so that this canvas would sit properly beside the portrait of his queen, Mariana of Austria, who poses indoors. Everything left standing is about command rather than majesty. He wears riding boots and spurs, which a viewer of the time read as the mark of a man who leads in the field, his helmet and gauntlet rest on the table, and a lion lies across the floor at his feet. The museum gives the painting to Velazquez's workshop. The composition is his, the hand that finished it belonged to the men who worked for him.