Mariana of Austria, Queen of Spain (1635–1696), regent

Mariana of Austria, Queen of Spain, this portrait belonging to the series Velázquez painted of Philip IV's young second queen, documents the monarch's official representation alongside his sustained documentation of the Infanta Margarita. The queen's elaborate court dress — the architectural structure of the Spanish court farthingale, the silver and black fabric, the enormous width — required Velázquez to organize each portrait around the challenge of showing a specific human face within an almost architectural costume. His response to this challenge evolved across the series: the free brushwork of his late manner increasingly treating the costume as a vehicle for the play of light while maintaining the queen's face as the portrait's psychological center.

The formal composition and elaborate costume project political authority — the widow's dark dress is enriched with jewels and the symbols of regency. The face, however, retains the human quality that Velazquez always maintained beneath the formal apparatus of state portraiture.