Portrait of Anna of Austria (1549-1580)

The picture belongs to the spring of 1573. Anne of Austria, the fourth wife of Philip II, was expecting her second son, Carlos Lorenzo, who was born that August. Sofonisba Anguissola had begun portraying her in November 1571 and finished this canvas before she left the Spanish court in June. The surprise is the clothing. In the official portraits by Alonso Sánchez Coello the queen appears in her ceremonial jewels, while here she wears the sort of black gown she put on daily, a white coif of curled thread and a necklace the museum suggests may be of scented calambuco beads. Her hands are in leather gloves dyed yellow, perhaps because the weather was still cold. On the plain ground behind her falls the shadow of her own silhouette.