A infanta Isabel Clara Eugênia no parque de Mariemont

In 1598 the aging King Philip II of Spain handed his favourite daughter, Isabella Clara Eugenia, and her husband Archduke Albert joint rule over the Spanish Netherlands, a territory then deep in a long war with the Dutch rebels to the north. This painting, from about 1601, shows none of that. Isabella walks in the calm of her park at Mariemont, a hunting estate near Brussels, among her ladies and the children of the court. Jan Brueghel, nicknamed Velvet for his fine touch, laid in the trees and the hazy distance. Look low in the scene and you find the everyday note the series was after, the infanta's little lapdogs yapping at a group of deer lying in the grass. She later sent the picture to Madrid to hang in the queen's rooms.