Son of Felipe III and Margarite de Austria, Fernando was born in 1609. He was Cardinal from the age of ten and Governor of Flanders from 1634 until his death in Brussels in 1641. This portrait was made just before he left to govern the Netherlands although another theory is that it was made later on the basis of drawings or sketches from that time. Fernando closely resembled his brother, Felipe IV, and appears in a similar pose, wearing brown clothes and accompanied by a dog, in this case a cinnamon-colored podenco hunting dog. Still, Fernando seems less solemn, closer to the viewer and with a certain, very elegant instability.

Like the portrait of his brother, the King (P1184) and of his nephew, Prince Baltasar Carlos (P1189), this work was made for the Torre de la Parada, a hunting lodge in the foothills of El Pardo.