Portrait of Infanta Margarita

Portrait of Infanta Margarita, painted around 1655 and one of Velázquez's series of likenesses of the Spanish princess, belongs to the sustained documentation of Philip IV's daughter that culminated in the great Las Meninas. Margarita was sent at regular intervals to Vienna as visual evidence of her growth for her intended husband, Emperor Leopold I — Velázquez's portraits serving as diplomatic instruments in the Habsburg marriage negotiations. The young princess in her elaborate court costume, the stiff silver and gold of her dress requiring its own internal architecture of hoops and padding, is rendered with affectionate precision: the child's face visible within the elaborate pageant of her royal presentation. These Infanta portraits anticipate the spatial and psychological complexity of Las Meninas.

The tiny princess is nearly overwhelmed by her enormous farthingale dress, which Velazquez renders as a broad expanse of silvery-pink fabric built up from transparent layers of color. The child's face, peering from above this textile mountain, is painted with the warmth and freshness that characterize Velazquez's portraits of children.