Portrait of King Philip IV

Portrait of King Philip IV, painted around 1623 in Velázquez's earliest royal manner, is among his first likenesses of the young king he would document across four decades. The portrait's relative formality — compared to his later freer manner — reflects his early period of court portraiture, when he was still establishing the conventions of his royal portraiture practice against the background of the older court tradition he had inherited. The plain Spanish court dress and direct gaze are already characteristic, but the atmospheric handling is tighter than his mature work. The painting is the beginning of one of the most sustained royal portrait relationships in the history of art — thirty-seven years of observation of the same face as it aged from youth to old age.

The early court portrait shows Velazquez still developing his Madrid manner — the handling is more deliberate and the tonal range more limited than in his mature work. The face is modeled with careful observation, recording the young king's distinctive Hapsburg features with unflattering honesty.