Portrait de l'Infante Marguerite

Portrait of Infanta Margarita at the Louvre, painted around 1660, is one of the last portraits Velazquez completed before his death. The young princess, now about nine years old, appears in the elaborate court costume that Velazquez had rendered in "Las Meninas" four years earlier. Velázquez's uncompromising naturalism and psychological penetration, combined with his revolutionary loose handling of paint in his late work, made him one of the most admired painters in history, his technique anticipating Impressionism and influencing Manet, Sargent, and countless others.

The extremely late date produces some of Velazquez's most dissolved brushwork — the elaborate dress becomes an almost abstract field of pink and silver strokes that suggest form without describing it. The face, by contrast, retains a concentrated clarity that anchors the composition.