Prince Baltasar Carlos
Ca. 1636. Oil on canvas.On display elsewhere
Born to Philip IV and Elizabeth of Bourbon in 1629, Baltasar Carlos was crown prince until his death in 1646. As such, he was the subject of numerous paintings, most of which are related to Velázquez and his workshop. This group of works is of great interest for understanding the history of Spanish portraiture and the notions associated with being a prince. Thus, along with images characterized by a specific iconography -The Riding Lesson (London, Duke of Westminster Collection) or Don Baltasar Carlos and an Attendant (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts), both by Velázquez- there are numerous paintings whose contents are very similar to those found in portraits of his father and thus emphasize the type of responsibilities he would have to assume when he inherited the throne. Several of these portraits show him as a child, standing in a setting associated with hunting. The principal referent in this group is Prince Baltasar Carlos, Hunter, which Velázquez painted when the prince was six years old. The same child appears with the same dogs in an indoor portrait (Great Britain, private collection), protected by a curtain with a wide landscape behind him (López-Rey, 1963, no. 309). There, he wears a hat and holds a blunderbuss in his right hand while resting his left on the pommel of a short sword. His suit is decorated with gold motifs and is thus much richer than in Velázquez’s portrait -much like the one he wears in Baltasar Carlos, Hunter (Szépmüveszeti Múzeum, Budapest), a painting sometimes attributed to Alonso Cano. The suit, pose and hunting gear are repeated in the present portrait, which varies in some ways from the previous one. Here, the prince’s hat has been respectfully placed on a cushion on the ground. He is alone, without the company of his dogs, and the landscape is less developed. The presence of the animals in the companion work invites us to date both of them after Velázquez’s work, that is, around 1636. Despite being an indoor scene, this work’s central theme is hunting: the prince holds a weapon and there is a landscape behind him. The Sierra de Guadarrama stands out on the horizon and the woodlands closer up undoubtedly recall El Pardo, the hunting preserve near Madrid where the royal family enjoyed one of its favorite pastimes. This context suggest that the building where the prince stands -if, in fact, it is a real place- is the El Pardo Palace or the Torre de la Parada. References to hunting in royal portraits are much more than a mere reflection of the royal family’s fondness for this activity; they also bear political meaning. During that period, hunting was frequently considered a metaphor or preparation for war, and was thus a very appropriate means of alluding to the military responsibilities awaiting a future king (Text from Portús, J.: El retrato español en el Prado. Del Greco a Sorolla, Museo Nacional de Prado, 2010, p. 96).
Portús Pérez, Javier, El príncipe Baltasar Carlos (h. 1636). En Ruiz Gómez, L.: El retrato español en el Prado. Del Greco a Goya, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2006, p.96, n. 23
