Ritratto di Filippo IV in armatura

Velazquez was in his mid-twenties and barely a year into the job when he painted this. In 1623 he had come up from Seville and been made painter to the king, an extraordinary post for someone so young, and Philip IV was younger still, just past twenty and only a few years on the throne. Here the king wears armour and a general's crimson sash, presented as a soldier rather than an administrator. What survives is only a fragment of a larger canvas that was cut down at some point. You can still see the plain, sculptural handling Velazquez brought with him from Seville, the face built up in firm light against a bare ground, before the softer touch of his later court portraits.