Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo, Queen Mariana of Spain in Mourning

Seated in a palatial interior, Queen Mariana of Spain is in mourning – she wears a white wimple and the black habit of widow’s weeds. This portrait – one of Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo’s finest works – was painted the year after the death of her husband Philip IV, King of Spain. Their son and heir, Charles, was too young to take to the throne, leaving Mariana to rule as regent until 1677.

She sits on a throne-like chair in the Hall of Mirrors of the Alcázar, the royal palace in Madrid, which was destroyed by fire in 1734. Her face is alert and her pose suggests that she is only sitting momentarily, perhaps implying that her position as ruler is temporary. Although represented as a wife and mother, she holds a petition, alluding to her official duties. An inscription on the paper names Mazo as the author of this portrait, identifies his position as court painter and includes the date 1666. A similar device was used by Velázquez in his Philip IV of Spain in Brown and Silver. A small dog – a symbol of fidelity – lies at her feet; a detail we also see in Murillo’s Portrait of Don Justino de Neve.

A young Charles appears in the background, accompanied by servants. He is being offered a drink from a red cup on a tray, and beyond him stands the gilded ‘toy’ carriage he used to move around the royal palace. Charles was a fragile child, and his death in 1700, without an heir, marked the end of Habsburg rule in Spain. Behind them is a bronze statue of Luna, Roman goddess of the moon, by the Flemish sculptor Jacques Jonghelinck, which adorned the palace’s Octagonal Room at the time (it is now in the Palacio Real, Madrid). The group in the background recalls Velázquez’s famous painting of 1656, Las Meninas (Museo del Prado, Madrid), in which Charles’s older sister, the young princess Margarita Theresa, is attended by maids and dwarves, and watched by her parents.

A replica of this portrait, possibly by Mazo himself, is in the El Greco Museum, Toledo. Only two of Mazo’s known paintings are signed: this, and his panoramic View of Zaragoza painted in 1647 (Prado, Madrid), which was inspired by Velázquez’s Philip IV Hunting Wild Boar (La Tela Real). Mazo was Velázquez’s son-in-law and principal assistant, and succeeded him as court painter after Velázquez’s death in 1660. Here, we can see his deliberate imitation of Velázquez’s loose, sketchy technique, though Mazo seems to lack his master’s subtlety.