Prince Don Carlos

Look through the little window at the left, past the storm cloud, and an eagle is carrying a column through the sky. That is a Habsburg badge, the pillar of Hercules, and it is doing the work the portrait was commissioned to do. The boy is Carlos, born in 1545, only son of Philip II of Spain and the heir everybody was waiting on. He was born with serious physical and mental disabilities, and the picture, painted between 1555 and 1559, hides them behind the fashion of the moment, a cloak lined with pale fur thrown wide over the shoulders, a stiff yellow doublet buttoned to the throat, a dagger at the belt. Carlos never reigned. His father had him shut in his rooms in 1568 and he died there within months, at 23. The canvas was later trimmed, taking Sanchez Coello's signature with it, but two old inventory numbers survive in red at the lower left corner.