Portrait of Queen Mariana

Portrait of Queen Mariana, painted around 1655 and among the series of official likenesses of Philip IV's second wife, belongs to Velázquez's court production in the final decade before Las Meninas. Mariana of Austria, who had originally been intended for Philip's son Baltasar Carlos before the prince's death, married the elderly king in 1649. Her elaborate costume — the vast architectural dress of Spanish court fashion in the 1650s, with its huge farthingale and stiff black and silver fabric — required Velázquez to manage the relationship between the mass of fabric and the young queen's face with the same spatial intelligence he brought to Las Meninas. The official portrait tradition he was developing in these years would reach its culmination in 1656.

The queen's extraordinary costume — hair built into wide wings, face painted white in the court fashion — creates an almost abstract pattern of textures and shapes. Velazquez renders this artificial appearance with the same objective honesty he applied to everything, finding beauty in convention rather than nature.