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Shortly after this portrait was painted the sitter, the Prince of Asturias, was proclaimed King of Spain and Portugal. Here the future Philip IV wears Portuguese ceremonial dress, in white and gold. He is accompanied by the dwarf Miguelito el Soplillo, a popular figure at the Spanish court, who came originally from the Low Countries.
The daughter of Henri IV of France and Marie de Médicis, Isabel de Borbón (1603-1644) was the first wife of Philip IV and the mother of Prince Baltasar Carlos and María Teresa of Austria. In Villandrando’s portrait, painted a year before Isabel became Queen of Spain, she wears a stiff, sumptuous dress that emphasises her presence and royal status. Although Spanish in cut, the
Philip IV´s sister, Maria, was born in El Escorial in 1606. As a result of her royal lineage, she was destined to become yet another pawn in the play of matrimonial alliances that the European courts found so useful. As a marriageable infanta, marrying her was first considered a means of improving diplomatic relations with England, but those efforts failed as a result of religious incompatabilites
