Portrait of Mariana of Austria, Queen of Spain

Portrait of Mariana of Austria, Queen of Spain, painted around 1655 as one of the official state portraits, belongs to Velázquez's documentation of the young queen who had married the aging Philip IV in 1649. Mariana, who had been born in 1634, was barely fifteen at her marriage to the fifty-four-year-old king — a dynastic arrangement that Velázquez's portraits register without comment. The elaborate architectural costume of Spanish court fashion, with its wide skirt and stiff fabric, required Velázquez to organize the portrait around the relationship between the massive dress and the young woman's face above it. His late royal portraits are technical marvels: free atmospheric brushwork constructing the elaborate costume while maintaining the human presence of the face as the picture's center.

The enormous farthingale and towering hairstyle create an almost geometric composition — a triangle of pink silk topped by a construction of hair, ribbons, and jewels. Within this elaborate frame, the queen's face is painted with surprising tenderness and naturalism.