Retrato da Infanta Maria Teresa de Espanha

This portrait had a job to do on the marriage market. Maria Theresa was the daughter of Philip IV of Spain, and around 1652 to 1653 Velázquez and his workshop produced several likenesses of her, about thirteen years old here, to be sent abroad to possible husbands. This version travelled to the Habsburg court in Vienna, which is why it hangs there still. Everything about her is arranged as much as painted. The vast stiff wig spreads out sideways, threaded with little red bows, and the wide dress pins her in place against the dark, a heavy velvet curtain looped above. It is court costume worn almost as armour. Velázquez, at the end of his life, handles the pale face and the glinting ornaments with a loose, sure touch that dissolves up close into pure strokes of paint. In the end she married none of these Habsburg suitors but her French cousin, Louis XIV.