Portrait of Don Fernando, Cardinal-Infante of Spain

When Rubens came to Madrid in 1628, the king's youngest brother was about 19 and already dressed in red. Fernando, the third son of Philip III, had been made a cardinal in 1619, when he was ten, and archbishop of Toledo, the richest see in Spain, a few months later. For a royal younger son, the church offered rank and a large income. It did not make him a churchman, and his ambitions, as the museum puts it, were above all political. Rubens painted him here in the cardinal's robes during that stay at the Spanish court. Six years later the same prince went north as Spain's governor in the Netherlands and spent the rest of his short life on campaign, until he died in Brussels in 1641, aged 32. In the streaky highlights and the broken reds of the robe, the museum sees the Titians that Rubens was studying in Madrid at the time.