Philippe IV en chasseur

A Spanish king in the 1630s was almost never shown like this. Court portraits demanded black state dress, stiff collars, the whole machinery of majesty. Here Philip IV stands in a brown hunting coat with a gun and a calm dog at his side, out in the grey-green scrub of the hills around Madrid. The setting is the Torre de la Parada, a modest royal hunting lodge in the oak woods near the El Pardo palace, where the king went to shoot and escape the rituals of the capital. Velazquez painted matching portraits of the king's younger brother and his small son in the same relaxed hunting pose, so the three could hang together as a family at ease. The dog dozing at Philip's feet is the plainest thing in the picture.