Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand of Austria, in Hunting Dress

Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand of Austria in Hunting Dress, painted around 1632-1633 and now in the Prado, belongs to the series of royal hunting portraits Velázquez produced for the Torre de la Parada, Philip IV's hunting lodge. Ferdinand, the king's younger brother, is shown in the outdoors with his hunting dog in a landscape that is simultaneously specific and atmospheric — the Guadarrama mountains behind him, the sky filling the composition with light. The hunting portrait format placed the royal sitter within a tradition of aristocratic leisure that combined the Flemish hunting picture with the Italian full-length portrait. Velázquez transformed the conventional type by the quality of his observed landscape and the psychological directness of his sitter's engagement with the viewer.

Like its companion portrait, this work places the royal figure in a landscape setting with his hunting dog. The cardinal-infante's costume is painted with the same attention to outdoor fabrics and leather that distinguishes the Philip IV hunting portrait, while the landscape recedes in soft atmospheric gradations.