Portrait of a Little Girl

Around 1640 the monarchy Velazquez served was coming apart. Catalonia rose that year, Portugal broke away in December, and within three years the king's chief minister Olivares, the man who had brought the painter to Madrid, was dismissed. Velazquez's own post by then involved as much palace administration as painting, and nearly everyone he portrayed belonged to the court. Children from outside the royal family are rare in his work, and this girl has never been securely identified. Since the studies of Aureliano de Beruete around 1900 the usual suggestion has been that she was his granddaughter, a child of his daughter Francisca and his pupil and son-in-law Martinez del Mazo, most often Ines Manuela, born in 1638, though her age never quite fits the way the brushwork is dated. The inventory of his possessions at his death in 1660 lists a girl's portrait that may be this canvas.