Ritratto di Maria Tudor

In 1554 Prince Philip of Spain was about to marry Mary Tudor, the Catholic queen of England, and he sent his court painter Antonis Mor across the Channel to bring back a portrait of the bride. This is it. Mary was 38, some 11 years older than Philip, and Mor paints her without flattery, thin-lipped and unsmiling, sitting stiffly upright in a red velvet chair. He had studied the sober, searching manner of Titian, and it shows in how closely he reads her tired face. In one hand she holds a red Tudor rose, and pinned at her breast is a huge pendant pearl, said to have been Philip's gift to her. The marriage this portrait helped seal bound England to Catholic Spain, and lasted only until Mary's death four years later, childless.