Portrait of Archbishop Fernando de Valdés

Fernando de Valdés was probably already dead when this portrait was painted. In 1633 he had become Archbishop of Granada and President of the Council of Castile, and he died in 1639. The National Gallery dates the canvas to the early 1640s. It may also be a piece of something larger. Valdés had commissioned a full-length seated portrait from Velázquez, now lost, known through a copy in the collection of the Counts of Toreno in Madrid. A separate fragment, a hand holding a letter signed by Velázquez, could come from the same canvas. What remains here is the head and shoulders, a heavy black cape, the bishop's hat and a gold-edged red curtain. The Scottish painter David Wilkie probably saw it in Madrid in 1828, in the collection of the painter José de Madrazo.