Ritratto del principe Filippo Prospero

By 1659 Philip IV of Spain badly needed a healthy son, and this is the one he was counting on, Prince Felipe Prospero, not yet two years old. Velázquez dresses him in protective amulets and charms hung from his waist, small talismans meant to guard a sickly child. Generations of Habsburg cousins marrying cousins had left the family frail, and the prince was epileptic. He died at three. Velázquez sent the portrait to the boy's Austrian relatives in Vienna, where it still hangs. The child looks solemn and unsteady, one hand resting on a chair, and on that chair sits a little dog, alert and looking straight out at you, the most alive thing in the room. It was among the last portraits Velázquez ever painted.