The calle de la Reina in Aranjuez

The 1794 inventory of Charles III's estate found this canvas in the prince's dining room at the palace of Aranjuez and wrote it down as a landscape with a view of the old entrance to El Pardo, with three coaches of six mules, by Mazo, worth 2,000 reales. The place was wrong. The avenue is the calle de la Reina at Aranjuez itself, the Tagus running along the left, people resting on the bank, a keeper opening the gate into the shaded walk. By 1834 the inventory had the title right and the painter wrong, entering it under Diego Velázquez at 8,200 reales. In 1857 it hung in the Real Museo as a Velázquez with the number 540, and that 540 is still on the picture, brushed in orange-red at the lower left corner. The Prado now gives it to Mazo and dates it no more closely than the 17th century.