On-line gallery
- Reference number
- P01186
- Author
- Velázquez, Diego Rodríguez de Silva y (Spanish)
- Title
- Cardinal-Infante Fernando de Austria
- Chronology
- Ca. 1633
- Technique
- Support
- Measures
- 191 cm x 107 cm
- School
- Theme
- Shown
- Yes
- Entrance
- COLECCIONREAL
- Procedence
- Royal Collection
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.
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