Vista de Saragoça em 1647

This is Zaragoza as it looked in 1647, seen across the Ebro, and unlike most city views of the time it tries to get every building right rather than just the famous ones. It carries a quiet sadness in its origin. The picture was ordered by Baltasar Carlos, the young heir to the Spanish throne, who had come to Zaragoza and fallen ill and died there in October 1646, only 16 years old. Mazo painted the view from a room in the convent where the prince died, and signed it the following year, so the patron never saw it. Mazo was Velazquez's son-in-law and worked in his studio, and some scholars still suspect the older master's hand in a few of the small figures along the riverbank.