This canvas was part of an unfinished series of Visigoth monarchs painted for the Buen Retiro Palace, which also included works by Vicente Carducho, Jusepe Leonardo, Antonio Pereda and Andrés López. That palace’s 1703 inventory lists only thirteen paintings of Gothic kings from this series commissioned after 1634, when the series of battle paintings for the same palace’s Hall of Realms had been completed. That earlier series also included works by some of the artists mentioned above.

The representations of these kings reflects a desire to convey a sense of heroism. Their monumental figures probably seek to cast them as authentic pillars of the Spanish monarcy, and their postures must have embodied power, resistance and continuity. Castello’s Theodoric is one of the most beautiful of the series, with a colorful pallet and an elegant figure with bejeweled blond tresses dressed anachronistically in medieval armor with a more modern crown. Its bellicose orientation is reinforced by the battle depicted in the background.