Portrait de l'infant don Carlos

When Velazquez painted this in 1626, he had just reached the court in Madrid, barely 27 and already the king's painter. His sitter is Don Carlos, the younger brother of Philip IV, so alike the king that for years people mistook the picture for the monarch himself. There was reason to watch him closely. As long as Philip had no son, Carlos stood next in line, and during one grave royal illness he came within reach of the throne. Then in 1629 the king finally fathered an heir, and Carlos's moment passed. He died three years later, at 25. Velazquez gives him the whole tall canvas and almost nothing to do: a black suit, the gold chain of the Golden Fleece, a hat in one hand, a glove hanging loose from the other.