Elisabeth Farnese, Queen of Spain

This Prado version of Elisabeth Farnese as Queen of Spain, dated 1739 and distinct from the 1745 Versailles version, belongs to van Loo's active Madrid court period and depicts the queen at approximately forty-five years old, still at the height of her political influence. The existence of multiple official portraits of Elisabeth at different dates reflects both the sustained demand for royal imagery from the Spanish court and van Loo's consistent role as the primary recorder of the Bourbon royal family's visual identity during his Madrid years. The 1739 dating places this portrait in the same year as van Loo's portrait of the young Infante Felipe, suggesting a coordinated campaign of royal portrait production that may have been intended for distribution to allied courts as demonstrations of dynastic strength and continuity. The Prado's multiple van Loo royal portraits constitute the most complete record of his Spanish court service and allow comparison of his handling of the same subjects across different commissions and years.

A 1739 portrait of Elisabeth Farnese shows van Loo's mature Spanish court style before his 1752 return to France—a somewhat more formal, graver approach than his French training alone would have produced, shaped by the Spanish tradition of monumental royal portraiture. His rendering of the queen's royal dress would be technically consistent with his other Spanish court works, with the same careful differentiation of textile surfaces and precise attention to jewelry and decorative detail.