Portrait of Philip I of Castile

When Queen Isabella of Castile died in 1504, her crown passed to her daughter Joanna, whose husband, the Habsburg Philip the Handsome, meant to rule beside her. He landed in Spain in the spring of 1506 and was dead by September. The museum dates this small panel to 1505 or 1506, his last two years.

He wears the gold collar of the Golden Fleece, the Burgundian order of knighthood, and holds a sword hilt and a violet carnation, perhaps a nod to his marriage, perhaps to Christ's Passion. The badge on his hat asks the Mother of God to remember him.

The sitter was also once read as his son, the future Charles V. The Borghese gave the panel to Michael Sittow in 2009, after X-rays of Sittow's portrait of King Christian II of Denmark, in Copenhagen, showed an almost identical portrait hidden underneath.