Joanna of Austria

Joanna of Austria was the daughter of Emperor Charles V and a figure of considerable political importance — regent of Spain during Philip II's absence and later foundress of the Descalzas Reales convent in Madrid. Antonis Mor painted her around 1560 at the Prado, capturing a woman who wielded real administrative power while fulfilling the ceremonial visual requirements of Habsburg dynastic portraiture. The portrait participates in the systematic documentation of the Habsburg family that Mor and his workshop maintained throughout the 1550s and 1560s, creating a network of images that both reflected and sustained the family's self-image as Europe's ruling dynasty. Joanna's deep mourning-like black attire, standard for Spanish court dress, gave Mor the characteristic challenge of differentiating multiple black fabrics from one another.

The challenge of rendering Spanish court black — fashionable precisely because of its difficulty — required Mor to distinguish velvet from satin from wool through subtle tonal and textural variation in paint application. Highlights in the brocade are achieved through scumbled lighter tones over the base layer, while velvet is rendered with flatter, more absorbed colour. Pearl earrings are tiny but precisely modelled with warm and cool highlights.