National Gallery Technical Bulletin Volume 26, 2005

Mazo’s Queen Mariana of Spain in Mourning
Paul Ackroyd, Dawson Carr and Marika Spring

The artistic personality of Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo (1611–1667) is obscured by the shadow of his father-in-law and master, Diego Velázquez (1599–1660) (note 1). For most of his career, Mazo’s chief responsibility was to emulate Velázquez’s style as closely as possible in copies and adaptations of portraits, principally of Philip IV and his immediate family. While Mazo’s personal style and technique were also dependent on Velázquez’s example, particularly in portraiture, he was not a slavish imitator, but rather an intelligent painter who can be credited with adapting Velázquez’s vision of the monarchy to circumstances that his master could not have envisaged. 

The National Gallery’s portrait of Queen Mariana (NG 2926) (plates 1 and 2) was signed and dated 1666, the year after the death of Philip IV, at the dawn of a new era in the history of the Spanish Habsburg monarchy. In this work Mazo demonstrates that he is an independent, innovative master of the royal portrait (note 2). The essential demeanour of the Queen, particularly her sobriety and psychological distance, are inherited from Velázquez, as is the presentation of her idealised features revealed by only the most subtle modelling (even if more laboured in Mazo’s hands). However, other aspects of the portrait show Mazo to be a knowledgeable and thoughtful artist serving new political imperatives in the depiction of his sovereign. The recent restoration and examination of the painting, one of only two signed and dated works by the artist, provide the opportunity to make some observations on the artist’s achievement and technique. 

The artist 
Mazo was probably born in the province of Cuenca, as were his parents, but in truth we know nothing of him before his marriage to Francisca Velázquez (1619–1653) in 1633 (note 3). He was clearly a well-established and trusted studio assistant by this date and came to live with his bride in her father’s household. In 1634 Velázquez arranged for Philip IV to appoint his new son-in-law to his former position of Usher of the Chamber, the first of a series of appointments that ensured Mazo’s social standing at court. This was ultimately measured by the extent of a courtier’s access to members of the royal family, and in 1643 Mazo was honoured with the appointment of Painter to the Infante Baltasar Carlos (1629–1646), the heir to the throne. Mazo had already proven his abilities, as in the Portrait of Baltasar Carlos (Hampton Court, The Royal Collection) which was dispatched to Charles I of England in 1639, and the painter continued to depict the growing prince (an exceptionally fine portrait of about 1645 is in the Prado, Madrid). Mazo was also Baltasar Carlos’s painting teacher and accompanied him on his travels throughout the country, and on these trips his talent as a view painter became evident. His monumental View of Saragossa (Madrid, Prado) shows remarkable topographical accuracy and spatial recession, but the figures are not as well composed or integrated as those in Velázquez’s Philip IV hunting Wild Boar (‘La Tela Real’) in the National Gallery (NG 197) (note 4). The View of Saragossa was made for the prince but was only finished in 1647, the year after his death (it is Mazo’s only other signed and dated work) (note 5). Mazo continued to produce fine view paintings, and also landscapes, some of which rank among the most distinguished Spanish responses to the example of Claude, who was well represented in the Spanish royal collection (note 6). In the views and landscapes, and in the charming, if awkward Portrait of the Artist’s Family (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum), Mazo can be seen at his most intimate. He was also an excellent copyist of history paintings by Titian, Rubens, Velázquez and others, and those preserved in the Prado show that he achieved more than a faithful reproduction, and captured a sense of the spirit of execution of such works (note 7). After Francisca Velázquez died in 1653, Mazo continued to enjoy her father’s support at court. In 1657, he was promoted in the royal household and given the rare privilege of a trip to Naples, returning late in 1658. In 1661 Mazo succeeded Velázquez as Pintor de Cámara and served the royal family until his death on 9 February 1667. 

While we have a body of work that is surely Mazo’s own, his precise hand has never been adequately defined, especially in portraiture. The best versions of Velázquez’s royal portraits are probably justifiably associated with Mazo, although it is also clear that there was more than one good painter in Velázquez’s studio. Mazo’s hand has been especially confused by the convenient attribution to him of virtually any portrait that is clearly not by Velázquez himself, including many surely produced under his supervision, but not necessarily with his participation. 

The portrait of Don Adrián Pulido Pareja in the National Gallery (NG 1315) illustrates some of the problems of attribution associated with Mazo (note 8). It is classified as ‘attributed to Mazo’ because, while it was clearly not made by Velázquez himself, it captures the sense of physical and psychological presence for which he was renowned. We assume that the only other painter capable of achieving this was Mazo, but when this work is compared with Queen Mariana of Spain in Mourning, it is difficult to believe that it was painted by the same artist. However, allowances must be made for the fact that Mazo was a chameleon and could mimic the manner of others with great facility. Also, the portraits were executed two decades apart, represent different classes of sitters, and the Pulido Pareja was probably made under Velázquez’s supervision. In the Queen Mariana of Spain in Mourning, we have a securely autograph work by Mazo and the observations below are presented in the hope that they will be helpful in the consideration of the artist as an independent painter. 

The sitter 
Archduchess María Anna (1634–1696), known as Mariana of Austria in Spain, was the daughter of Emperor Ferdinand III and the Infanta María, sister of Philip IV (note 9). Continuing the Habsburg tradition of dynastic intermarriage, she was betrothed to her cousin, Philip IV’s heir-presumptive, Baltasar Carlos, the prince served by Mazo. The premature death of the prince in 1646 left the Spanish succession in question, so the king, whose first spouse had died in 1644, was hard pressed to find an appropriate wife to bear him a son. Mariana was deemed the most suitable candidate and was married to her uncle, thirty years her senior, in 1649. Velázquez captured the captivating beauty of her first two children, Infanta Margarita, born in 1651, and Infante Felipe Próspero, born in 1659, in portraits dispatched to the Emperor and now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Felipe Próspero lived only four years and the future king Charles II, who is depicted in the background of Mazo’s portrait of Mariana, was not born until 1661. He was not a beautiful child and it became ever more clear that he had a feeble mind and body. When Philip IV died in 1665, he left a nation in need of a visionary leader, a sickly child, and a reluctant Mariana to act as Regent until her son’s maturity in 1677. The regency and reign of Charles II, who proved incapable of ruling, were sad postscripts to the Golden Age of Habsburg Spain and no leader of substance held power long enough to make a difference to the troubled economy and system of government. The dowager Queen remained attached to her son and tried to protect him from those who sought to influence him unduly until her death in 1696. The legacy of Habsburg intermarriage over generations, Charles II was not able to produce an heir and on his death in 1700, the glorious Spanish Habsburg dynasty came to an ignoble end. 

The portrait 
In Mazo’s portrait, the Queen is depicted in the traditional mourning garb of Spanish ladies, often confused for a nun’s habit, a manner of dress that she would retain for the rest of her life (note 10). The dog at her feet alludes to her fidelity, not only to her dead husband, but also to her five-year-old son depicted in the distance with a retinue to protect and amuse him (plate 3). One attendant offers him a cup, perhaps suggested by the central motif in Velázquez’s Las Meninas. Behind him, the small woman may be the German or Austrian dwarf Maribárbola who appears in Las Meninas. To the right, a splendid toy coach awaits. The prince is on a lead, not unusual for small children, but Charles was already five and yet still struggled to support himself independently. 

The year the portrait was painted was particularly difficult for Mariana. While still in mourning for her husband, she had to bid farewell to her beloved twelve-year-old daughter Margarita, who was sent to marry her uncle the Emperor Leopold. In this year the realities of politics at the heart of the Spanish empire also became clear. Mariana was politically inept and, after Philip’s demise, she increasingly relied on her confessor, Father Juan Everardo Nithard, an Austrian Jesuit who had accompanied her to Spain. As Mazo’s portrait was being conceived and painted, Mariana was working to secure the naturalisation of Nithard so that he could be appointed Inquisitor General and serve on councils of state. However, many grandees were appalled that she would appoint a foreigner to one of the highest offices in the land and were turning their allegiance to the illegitimate son of Philip IV, Don Juan José, who was seeking power. He did not ultimately succeed, but Mariana surely realised the difficulty of her position as a foreigner and the first woman since Isabella the Catholic to serve as head of state. In Mazo’s depiction, the Queen shows no sign of her troubles, true to the tradition of Spanish royal portraiture to present an impassive, superior being. 

Mazo’s Queen Mariana of Spain in Mourning was the first portrait to record the new political situation in Spain. For the first time a child had succeeded to the throne, so Mazo understood that the portrait needed to be a pictorial rendering of regency. By showing Mariana seated in an armchair canted at a diagonal to the picture plane, the artist employed a state portrait formula that had not been used in the depiction of the Spanish Habsburgs since Titian’s full-length Portrait of the Emperor Charles V (Munich, Alte Pinakothek). Mazo used this formula to endow the mourning Queen with a decorous, serene, yet authoritative repose apposite to a state portrait. Mazo indicated the justification for Mariana’s office by depicting the young prince as a child on a lead, his toys awaiting, while his mother attends to his affairs. Mazo signs the painting in the form of a petition: Señora and below Juan Bap de[l] Mazo 1666, a common method of signing such a portrait, but it also suggests that the Queen is at work, holding an audience. 

Mariana is seated at the end of the Hall of Mirrors, the ceremonial centre of the Royal Palace and behind her is a glimpse of the Octagonal Room, designed and constructed in 1646–8 in a tower of the old Alcázar by Juan Gómez de Mora, the master of the royal works (note 11). This was one of the major renovations of the King’s Apartments carried out in consultation with Velázquez, who was the project overseer and decorator of the finished room (note 12). The new space was on an axis with the main sequence of ceremonial rooms in the palace and was intended to overwhelm with its sumptuousness. An inventory of the room made in 1666, the same year as Mazo’s portrait of Mariana, gives an indication of its contents, if not the actual placement of the objects (note 13). Twenty paintings by Flemish artists, most notably Rubens and Frans Snijders, represented hunting and war mythologies, planetary deities, and Hercules, the legendary first king of Spain. Mazo had been involved in the decoration of the room, restoring and preparing the twenty paintings (note 14), but he provides only a glimpse of two of them above the door at the left. Others are now visible in the X-ray under the curtain (plate 4). 

The room was animated with works of sculpture, most prominently seven life-size bronze figures representing planetary deities by Jacques Jonghelinck (1530–1606), one of which can be seen in Mazo’s painting (plate 3) (note 15). This statue has often been mistakenly identified as Venus, who in fact is posed with her arm and hand extended across her torso in reference to the Venus Pudica type. The statue depicted by Mazo represents Luna, as confirmed by comparison with the original in the Royal Palace (fig. 1) and with Galle’s engravings of the series. Following tradition, Jonghelinck shows Luna as Diana, and interestingly the statue seems to have already lost its attributes, the bow and arrow recorded by Galle, when it was depicted by Mazo. This rare series of monumental Flemish Renaissance bronzes had been acquired by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand from a merchant in Antwerp and shipped to Madrid for installation in the Buen Retiro Palace, from which they were removed and restored for the Octagonal Room (note 16). 

Jonghelinck’s Planetary Deities, as well as the painted depictions of the planets above, alluded to Philip IV’s epithet, the ‘Planet King’, which was coined to reflect his global domination and glory. In panegyrics of the period, Philip was specifically named as the Sun King. Rulers had long been identified with the brightest heavenly body, the source of illumination and prosperity, but this title was deemed especially appropriate for Philip because he was the fourth king of that name just as Sol, the Sun, was the fourth planet of the Ptolemaic universe. Whether or not Jonghelinck’s Luna was actually positioned in the Octagonal Room as Mazo depicts, this statue was the most appropriate to show behind Mariana because the Moon was the Sun’s consort and shines brightest once the Sun has set. Luna and Sol are normally paired and the position of Luna in Mazo’s painting would suggest that Jonghelinck’s Sol is on the other side of the door, just out of sight, like the memory of the king. As the X-radiograph (plate 4) demonstrates, Mazo depicted the statue of Luna in full and only later painted the drape over the head, perhaps ‘veiling’ her to indicate mourning. 

Mazo’s painting does not fully reflect the richness and colour of the setting. The Octagonal Room had a sumptuous marble revetment and jasper pilasters and niches. In 1651, the Tuscan ambassador compared its splendour to the Tribuna of the Uffizi (note 17). Although the Queen sits in the Hall of Mirrors, we are only shown the tiled floor and no trace of its elaborate decoration, also realised by Velázquez and depicted in later portraits of the Queen. These elements seem to have been deliberately downplayed by Mazo to concentrate on the royal person in mourning. The heavy brocade curtain follows the tradition established by Velázquez in his late royal portraits. 

This painting marks a new phase in the depiction of the Spanish Habsburgs by introducing the state rooms of a royal palace as the most fitting backdrop for a royal portrait. Velázquez had preferred neutral settings or merely a few choice props for his royal portraits. However, Velázquez had also shown that a recognisable palatial setting could be used for meaningful effect by setting Las Meninas in his grand studio. Mazo’s utilisation of the state apartments in this portrait set a precedent that would be followed by painters depicting the royal family for the next generation, especially by Juan Carreño de Miranda, one of Mazo’s successors as court painter (note 18). 

If we are to judge from the two existing copies of the painting, Mazo’s assistants were not as capable as Velázquez’s. A faithful copy in the Museo de El Greco, Toledo (plate 5), is clearly by another hand, but might well have been produced under Mazo’s direction. A reduced, three-quarter-length version of this design, formerly in the collection of Sir Francis Cook and now in the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico, was also probably produced in Mazo’s studio as it shows the Luna in full, as Mazo first painted it in NG 2926 (note 19). 

Painting support and ground layers 
The painting support is a medium fine, plain-weave canvas, presumably linen (note 20). In the X-radiograph, cusping in the canvas weave is apparent along all four edges, thereby indicating that the original image dimensions have not been reduced, although the original tacking margins and stretcher were removed during a lining treatment most probably carried out in the nineteenth century. 

The mid-orange-brown ground layer is composed mainly of gypsum (calcium sulphate), iron oxide, various aluminosilicates and a little black, bound with a drying oil (plate 6) (note 21). In some cross-sections there is evidence that the ground consists of up to three layers, the lower layers being richer in calcium sulphate; this argues for a deliberate mixture of gypsum and earth pigment rather than a natural mixture in a gypsum-rich earth pigment. In the uppermost layer there is a small amount of lead white and, in one sample, some smalt. This corresponds with Francesco Pacheco’s instructions in The Art of Painting of 1649 to apply the earth pigment-based priming in three layers, mixing a little lead white into the final layer (note 22). The ground is moderately thick, partially obscuring the canvas weave. Long white lines visible in the X-radiograph, which bear no relation to the image and do not appear to be associated with the lining, indicate that the ground was applied with a knife or spatula (fig. 2). Similar, but more pronounced, arced lines caused by the ground application have been noted in X-radiographs of Velázquez’s paintings (note 23). 

The brown colour of the ground is typical of Spanish painting of the period. Mazo’s close connection with Velázquez makes it interesting to compare the ground on this painting with what has been found in paintings by Velázquez, especially since the choice of ground layer is such a fundamental aspect of painting technique. Velázquez did not use the same type of ground throughout his career; his early paintings from Seville have a brown ground (brown earth, calcium carbonate and black) while the grounds on his first paintings in Madrid, although based on earth pigment (red earth, calcium carbonate and black), are redder in colour because the earth is richer in iron oxide (note 24). The paintings from the end of his career, closest in date to the painting by Mazo, have relatively light warm brown grounds. For example, on Las Meninas, from around 1656, the ground is a warm beige colour consisting of coarse lead white, black and red ochre (note 25). 

The ground on Queen Mariana of Spain in Mourning has more in common with the brown grounds of Velázquez’s paintings from Seville than with those from Madrid, being yellow-brown rather than red in tone and relatively translucent because of the high proportion of gypsum and clay minerals. The earth pigment used by Velázquez in his Seville paintings was perhaps that often referred to as ‘Seville earth’ because of Pacheco’s recommendation that ‘the best and smoothest priming is the clay used here in Sevilla’ (note 26). Two early paintings by Velázquez in the National Gallery – Saint John the Evangelist on the Island of Patmos (NG 6264) and The Immaculate Conception (NG 6424) – have very similar brown earth grounds containing a distinctive mixture of minerals. The main components are calcium carbonate, silica and iron oxide, with a small amount of lead white. Also present, as mineral impurities in the earth pigment, are golden particles of pyrite (FeS2) and highly refracting black particles in which iron and titanium were detected by EDX analysis (note 27). The earth pigment used by Mazo is therefore different from that used by Velázquez both in Seville and in Madrid. In addition, Mazo’s practice of mixing gesso with the earth pigment in Queen Mariana was not taken from Velázquez. The picture was, of course, painted after Velázquez’s death, but it appears that Mazo did not adhere to the methods of ground preparation that he would have seen in Velázquez’s studio in Madrid. 

Paint layers 
The paint medium is a heat-bodied linseed oil. The oil was particularly highly heat-bodied in a black area of the Queen’s dress, possibly to facilitate drying (note 28). The deep velvety black pigment in the dress appears glossy and highly refracting under the microscope, which suggests that it is coal black. The same coarse black pigment was seen in a sample from the grey wall behind the Queen, mixed with lead white, red earth and smalt, and here the FTIR analysis also suggested that it is coal black (note 29). Coal black does not appear to have been a rare pigment, since a study of sixteenth-century Italian paintings identified many occurrences (note 30). It is relatively difficult to identify, accounting for the fact that it has not so far been reported in Spanish painting. It is, however, mentioned by Hidalgo in his Principles for Studying the Art of Painting of 1693, as a pigment suitable for fresco (note 31). 

Coal black was also used, mixed with red earth and smalt, in the brownish curtain hanging behind the Queen. The smalt has discoloured, but even when it had a stronger blue colour this mixture of pigments must have been rather dull (note 32). A small amount of smalt, also discoloured, was mixed with the grey paint of the architecture and floor tiles, as well as with the pink paint of the flesh (note 33). 

Painting technique 
There are marked similarities between Mazo’s method of painting in Queen Mariana of Spain in Mourning and the later paintings of Velázquez. In general, both artists followed a fairly simple technique, employing thin applications of paint usually executed in single layers without a multi-layering of colours; both were sparing in their use of glazes and scumbles. Relatively few drawings exist that are attributable to them and neither artist seems to have made consistent or elaborate use of preparatory drawings, either on paper or in the initial stages of painting. As was the case with many seventeenth-century painters, both artists made continual adjustments and revisions to their compositions throughout the painting process. Velázquez, among others, was responsible for a shift in Spanish painting during the first half of the seventeenth century towards a loose and expressive use of brushwork, accompanied by an apparent lack of finish. This technique of painting, termed colorido in Spanish painting treatises, had become established practice during the last two thirds of the century and contrasted with dibujo – a traditional reliance on preliminary drawing and a detailed, more polished level of finish. Changes in attitude to drawing and debates over non finito in seventeenth-century Spanish paintings have been ably dealt with by McKim-Smith et al. and Veliz (note 34). 

Drawing 
In his portrait of Queen Mariana, Mazo began by loosely sketching in the outlines for the basic elements of the composition using a fairly broad brush and thin black paint directly over the ground. This freely applied underdrawing is evident as pentimenti in a number of passages, and is clearly visible in the infrared reflectogram detail showing an initial drawing for the position of the dog that was later revised (fig. 3). 

The tilted perspective of the floor tiles was ruled with the aid of a straight edge. These lines meet at a vanishing point at the right edge, approximately two centimetres above the back of the chair, used to create the perspective of the tiles. Velázquez also made use of ruled lines in Las Meninas, for the sunlit doorway in the background and the pictures, frames, windows, shutters and stairs (note 35). One might expect Mazo to have used ruled lines for the background architecture but, judging from the irregular outlines of these features, they appear to have been drawn freehand. 

Painting 
Initially, the background passages – the architecture at the left, the grey wall behind the sitter and the floor tiles in the middle distance – were established in thin single applications of paint, leaving areas of reserve for the Queen, the dog and the group of figures on the far left. Brief outlines for the architecture were later established using dark transparent blacks and browns and occasional discreetly placed highlights. Similarly, thin transparent brown and opaque white streaks of paint were used to represent the veining in the marble floor tiles in the foreground. The veining becomes more vague and less distinct in tiles further back in order to give an impression of distance. 

In the finished painting, Mazo left areas of ground partially visible at the edges of forms, only barely covered by thin washes of paint so as to produce a softening or blurring effect. This is apparent around the outlines of the background architecture and sitter’s dress, the edge between the curtain and grey background wall and the edges of the floor tiles in the middle distance. This aspect of Mazo’s technique is reminiscent of Velázquez’s later paintings, but in Mazo’s portrait the use of the ground colour is not as striking or as economical as that in some of his father-in-law’s paintings. In Velázquez’s portrait of Philip IV in Brown and Silver (NG 1129), for example, the warm brown colour used throughout Philip’s costume is in fact the ground, onto which is superimposed thin applications of black to indicate the folds, and short impasto strokes of grey and white for the decoration of the costume. 

The curtain behind Queen Mariana was initially painted in modulated tones of thinly applied blacks, umbers and ochres, blended while the paint was still wet. Once dried, these colours were overlaid with thick, rapidly executed strokes of pale ochres and touches of red earth and black mixed with smalt, creating the pattern and texture of the heavy brocade fabric. The thin, fluid paint consistency is clearly apparent in parts of the curtain where the colour has been allowed to dribble down the picture surface (plate 7). This apparent lack of finish is also a feature of Velázquez’s manner of painting (note 36). The general shape and form of the curtain have been simplified and are not entirely convincing, suggesting that this drapery was not painted directly from life. 

The background group of figures is perhaps one of the most accomplished passages in the painting (see plate 3); the rapidly applied brushwork in this relatively small area displays a deftness of touch, especially in the facial features and costumes of the four foremost members of the group (note 37). Here, the freely applied brushstrokes contrast with the more carefully laboured paint handling in Mariana’s portrait. Additionally, the bright touches of colour in this background area – the red cup and the blue fabric hanging at the back of the toy coach – coupled with the most prominent use of impasto in the picture, seen in the flickering highlights defining the wheels and ornate decoration of the coach, serve as a foil to the sombre colouring and tonality in the rest of the picture. 

Mazo paid considerable attention to reproducing the differences in weight and texture of the various types of fabric worn by the Queen – a skill most probably derived from his father-in-law. The subtle control of tone in the thinly applied greys and blacks in Mariana’s dress convincingly conveys the form and texture of a thin, crisp silk cloth. The white linen apron is also well observed and, unlike the curtain, gives the impression of having been painted directly from life. The modelling of the folds has been achieved by varying thicknesses of white and pale grey scumbled over a darker grey underlayer, to produce a cool white that subtly contrasts with the warm white of the petition held in the Queen’s right hand. This is the only area of the picture where the paint applications have been deliberately layered to give a particular optical effect. The black headdress appears to be made of a less stiff fabric than that used for the dress. The folds in the headdress are suggested by broad black brushstrokes, applied freely after the thin, modulated underlayers of dark and pale grey had dried. Although some allowances must be made for the poor condition of this area, the suggestion of form is less assured than that in the dress and apron. 

Mariana’s face is painted in fairly thick, heavily worked applications of opaque paint that become slightly thinner towards the edges of the contours. This is apparent from a visual inspection of the picture and an examination of the X-radiograph, in which the paint appears to have been dabbed onto the surface in small, short strokes (fig. 4). The cool half-tones are achieved with greys applied on top of the pale flesh colour or blended into it while wet. The face is evenly lit with few strong areas of shadow and the modelling is subtle and indistinct. The sparing use of dark shadow, restricted to the chin, a small area below the nose, the eyebrows and left temple, is simply achieved by thin applications of brown-black paint. Mariana’s right hand is painted in much the same way as the face, but the brushwork in her left hand is looser. 

In comparison with Velázquez’s full-length portrait of Queen Mariana in the Prado (inv. 1191), painted between 1652 and 1653, Mazo’s portrait achieves a similar impression of the face being slightly out of focus, but in Velázquez’s portrait the paint application is generally thin and the canvas weave remains visible. This observation is confirmed in the X-radiograph (fig. 5) (note 38). Additionally, there is a considerable degree of fluency in Velázquez’s brushwork, particularly around the eyes and lips, whereas Mazo’s portrait, although it carefully mimics the impression of a late Velázquez, is painted using relatively thick applications of colour that obscure the canvas texture and lack spontaneity in the handling. 

Mazo experienced some difficulty in painting the dog and, despite significant revisions made in this passage, he was unable to achieve a credible representation. Although the dog’s head is plausible, the rest of its body is not: comparisons between Velázquez’s remarkable facility for painting animals and the dog in this picture illustrate the disparity in skills between the two artists. 

Alterations 
Apart from the numerous, relatively small adjustments made to the outlines of forms several areas underwent quite radical change. The dog, for example, was originally drawn sitting upright, higher in the composition than is seen now (fig. 3). In another portrait attributed to Mazo, Child in Ecclesiastical Dress in Toledo, Ohio, also set in the Alcázar and dated 1660–7, a similar dog is featured sitting upright but facing the other way (note 39). In the National Gallery painting, vertically drawn lines indicated the positions of the dog’s front legs and an area of reserve was left for the head, which was placed immediately below the chair seat. This position was abandoned before any painting was carried out and the animal was then placed lower in the picture, in a reclining pose similar to that of the dog in Las Meninas. In order to accommodate the revised position, several attempts were made to redefine the dog’s back, hindquarters and stomach. The legs were then painted over the floor tiles, which remain visible as pentimenti. 

By placing the right side of the chair almost parallel to the picture plane, Mazo created difficulties in finding a plausible seating arrangement for the three-quarter view of Queen Mariana. Consequently, the chair underwent a series of changes: the back of the chair was initially higher than its present position by about one centimetre; several attempts were made in placing the two chair legs in the foreground; and the chair arm at the left, which had once extended further to the left, was brought back by approximately eight centimetres and the alteration is now visible as a grey pentimento in the steps leading to the background figures. 

The X-radiograph shows that the painting of the statue and architecture had been completed before the hanging piece of curtain at the upper left was added (see plate 4). For a number of reasons there was some doubt over the status of this area of the hanging curtain: it does not appear in another known three-quarter-length version of the painting (note 40), the rendering of the brocade pattern in the curtain on the right is different from that in the section on the left, and its spatial position is ambiguous. Examination of paint cross-sections, however, revealed that the pigments in the hanging piece at the left and those in the rest of the fabric were identical, and furthermore, the paint layers in the former conform closely to the topography of the underlying paint of the architecture, with no evidence of old varnish or dirt layers between the two. It was concluded that the curtain at the far left was most probably an alteration carried out by the artist late on in the painting process. It is possible that the artist felt that a full view of the statue of Luna may have competed with the attention focused on Mariana’s portrait. 

The inscription at the lower left corner is certainly a later addition as it refers to Charles II’s death in 1700. The paint in the inscription contains ochre pigments and therefore cannot be dated precisely. 

Restoration treatment 
The painting was cleaned and restored shortly after its acquisition by the Gallery in 1913 but no details of this treatment were recorded (note 41). The picture was cleaned and restored again in 1960 and during this treatment earlier retouching layers, possibly dating from the 1913 restoration or an earlier nineteenth-century treatment, were left intact (see plate 1) (note 42). These old and heavily discoloured restorations had been extensively applied over areas that had suffered considerable damage from overcleaning: the curtain at the top, the grey wall behind the Queen, her left arm and shoulder, the chair back, the tiles below the chair and the area around the dog. The removal of practically all the restoration and varnish layers – the varnish that had been unevenly applied in 1960, containing mastic resin in a heat-bodied linseed oil with traces of turpentine, had noticeably discoloured (note 43) – in the recent treatment, completed in 2004, increased the sense of spatial recession, especially between the Queen and the grey background wall, and improved the definition and modelling in the Queen’s black draperies and chair (see plate 2). 

During the recent restoration decisions had to be made over the suppression of pentimenti. It is probable that both Mazo and Velázquez made little attempt to completely obscure their revisions during painting and deliberately left these partly visible in order to create an apparent lack of finish. However, these alterations have undoubtedly become more evident over time, due to the increasing transparency of the oil medium on ageing. These problems are not peculiar to Mazo and Velázquez but are often symptomatic of a non finito style of painting where revisions to the composition were constantly made during the course of painting. Additionally, the visibility of pentimenti may be further exaggerated through previous overcleaning, and thinly painted pictures containing large areas of black, such as those by Mazo and Velázquez, would have been particularly vulnerable to the materials commonly used for cleaning pictures in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Generally, in the recent restoration of Mazo’s picture, pentimenti were left visible without reducing their presence, except in parts where they had become overly exposed by an earlier cleaning. For instance, in the relatively undamaged area of the pentimento for the chair arm, immediately to the left of Mariana’s left hand, little restoration was carried out. On the other hand, pentimenti of the drawing and area of reserve for the dog, which had been exposed by the extensive removal of overlying original paint, were suppressed. 

During the recent cleaning it became evident that the ring on the Queen’s right thumb was not original and had been added either in the 1913 restoration or earlier in the nineteenth century (see plate 1). The black and ochre paint of this ring covered a large, filled loss, and a microscopic examination of the area did not reveal any fragments of original that might have been part of an authentic ring. By comparison, the ring on her left hand, on the finger traditionally reserved for a wedding ring, is original and was not vulnerable to the solvents used in cleaning. Additionally, the Queen is not depicted wearing a thumb ring in other portraits of her. For these reasons the thumb ring was not reinstated. 

Conclusions 
It is hardly surprising that Mazo’s painting style and technique maintained strong similarities with Velázquez’s even after the latter’s death. Although there are similarities in their methods of painting, perhaps the most important distinguishing technical feature is in their handling of paint. In his portrait of Mariana, Mazo is unable to replicate the vigour and fluency of Velázquez’s brushwork, and the variation in surface quality. The quality of Mazo’s paint handling, by comparison, is inconsistent: some areas are executed with a lively sense of touch, for example the background group of figures, whereas other passages, such as the Queen’s face, are more heavily laboured. In some other passages the spatial arrangement and modelling of forms are poorly realised – the curtain, the dog and the arrangement of the sitter in the chair, for example. 

Although a considerable amount of research has been done on the materials and painting technique of Velázquez, little work has been carried out on artists working within his circle. Mazo is particularly interesting because of his close professional and family ties with Velázquez, and for this reason it was worth examining in detail this signed and firmly attributed portrait. The lack of information on artists closely associated with Velázquez has meant that many paintings executed in his style, but of lesser quality, have been loosely attributed to Mazo. The present study provides information on the artist’s working practices in his late career that may assist in this problematic area of attribution of paintings by artists working in the style of Velázquez. 

Acknowledgements 
We are grateful to Gabriele Finaldi and Carmen Garrido of the Prado, Madrid, for their assistance in preparing this article. Thanks are also due to colleagues at the National Gallery: Rachel Billinge, Catherine Higgitt and Raymond White for their technical examination of Mazo’s portrait, and Ashok Roy and Rachel Grout for their work on the paintings by Velázquez.

Notes and references
1 Mazo has never been the subject of a monograph. On him, see particularly Juan Antonio Gaya Nuño, ‘Juan Bautista del Mazo, el gran discípulo de Velázquez,’ in Varia Velazqueña, Madrid 1960, vol. 1, pp. 471–81; Peter Cherry, ‘Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo, viudo de Francisca Velázquez (1653),’ Archivo español de arte, 63, 1990, pp. 511–27; Nina Ayala Mallory, ‘Juan Bautista del Mazo: retratos y paisajes,’ Goya, 221, 1991, pp. 265–76; and Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez, s.v. in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner, London and New York 1996, Vol. 20, pp. 899–900. As Cherry, loc. cit. p. 511, n. 1, has signalled, Mazo’s date of birth can be assigned to 1611 based on his declaration of his age as 44 in 1655 (see Mercedes Agulló Cobo, Más noticias sobre pintores madrileños de los siglos XVI al XVIII, Madrid 1981, p. 135).
2 See particularly Yves Bottineau, ‘A Portrait of Queen Mariana in the National Gallery,’ The Burlington Magazine, 97, 1955, pp. 114–16 and Neil MacLaren, National Gallery Catalogues: The Spanish School, 2nd edn rev. Allan Braham, London 1970, pp. 52–4.
3 José López Navío, ‘Matrimonio de Juan Bautista del Mazo con la hija de Velázquez,’ Archivo español de arte, 33, 1960, pp. 387–420.
4 See MacLaren (cited in note 2), pp. 101–8.
5 Wilfredo Rincón García, ‘Tres vistas de Zaragoza del siglo XVII,’ in Velázquez y el arte de su tiempo, Jornadas de Arte V, Madrid 1991, pp. 299–308.
6 Elizabeth du Gué Trapier, ‘Martínez del Mazo as a Landscapist,’ Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1955, p. 73.
7 On Mazo as a copyist of Velázquez, see Enriqueta Harris, ‘‘Las Meninas’ at Kingston Lacy,’ The Burlington Magazine, 132, 1990, pp. 125–30.
8 See MacLaren (cited in note 2), pp. 54–8.
9 On Mariana and this period in Spanish history, see J.H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469–1716, New York 1964, pp. 354–82, and Henry Kamen, Spain in the Later Seventeenth Century 1665–1700, London and New York 1980, pp. 328–92.
10 Carmen Bernis, ‘El traje de viudas y dueñas en los cuadros de Velázquez y su escuela,’ Miscelanea de arte, Elisa Bermejo and Alfonso Pérez Sánchez, eds., Madrid 1982, pp. 145–54.
11 Bottineau (cited in note 2), p. 115, identified the setting.
12 See Steven N. Orso, Philip IV and the Decoration of the Alcázar of Madrid, Princeton, 1986, pp. 153–62 for the decoration of the Octagonal Room.
13 Ibid., Appendix I, pp. 202–3.
14 Ibid., p. 156.
15 Bert Meijer, ‘The re-emergence of a Sculptor: eight life size bronzes by Jacques Jonghelinck,’ Oud Holland, 93, 1979, pp. 116–35; the Luna is illustrated in figs. 27–8, the Galle engraving of the statue is shown in fig. 11. See also Luc Smolderen, Jacques Jonghelinck: Sculpteur, médailleur, et graveur de sceaux (1530–1606), Louvain, 1996, especially chapter V.
16 See Iain Buchanan, ‘The collection of Niclaes Jongelinck: I. ‘Bacchus and the Planets’ by Jacques Jongelinck,’ The Burlington Magazine, CXXXIII, 1990, pp. 108–10, on the statues coming to Spain. Orso (cited in note 12) gives a full account of the decoration of the room. By the time Mazo’s portrait was painted, the series of statues was completed with three bronze casts of antique originals commissioned by Velázquez on his trip to Italy in 1650. In the middle of the room, out of view in Mazo’s painting was a jasper table with a bronze cast of the Spinario. We also do not see the series of twelve marble portrait medallions displayed on pedestals, but one of the four bronze busts that completed the decoration can be seen over the door at right.
17 As reported by Carl Justi, Velázquez und sein Jahrhundert, Zurich 1933, p. 545, n. 1. Jonathan Brown, Velázquez, Painter and Courtier, New Haven and London 1986, p. 194, points out that the decoration of the room anticipates the redecoration of the Tribuna by Cosimo III de’ Medici following his visit to Madrid in 1668–9.
18 See Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez, Juan Carreño de Miranda, 1614–1685, Avilés 1985.
19 Julius S. Held, Rene Taylor and James N. Carder, Museo de Arte de Ponce: Fundación Luis A. Ferré; Paintings and Sculpture of the European and American Schools, Ponce 1984, p. 200, as by Mazo.
20 The fibres of the original canvas have not been identified. The canvas has a weave count of 11/12 threads per centimetre in both weave directions.
21 The pigments and binding medium were identified by EDX analysis in the SEM and FTIR microscopy.
22 Z. Veliz, Artists’ Techniques in Golden Age Spain, Cambridge 1986, p. 68.
23 C. Garrido Pérez, Velázquez. Técnica y Evolución, Museo del Prado, Madrid 1992. Many of Velázquez’s paintings examined in this study have grounds applied by knife, for example: The Forge of Vulcan (inv. 1171); Philip IV on Horseback (inv. 1178); Queen Isabela of France on Horseback (inv. 1179), Doña Antonia de Ipeñarrieta and Her Son Don Luis (inv. 1196); The Buffoon Called ‘Don Juan of Austria’ (inv. 1200); Queen Mariana of Austria (inv. 1191); Aesop (inv. 1206); Las Meninas (inv. 1174).
24 C. Garrido, M.T. Davila, R. Davila, ‘General remarks on the painting technique of Velázquez and restoration carried out at the Museo del Prado’, Conservation of the Iberian and Latin American Cultural Heritage, Preprints of the IIC congress, Madrid 1992, H.W.M. Hodges, J.S. Mills and P. Smith eds, London 1992, pp. 46–53.
25 G. McKim-Smith, G. Andersen-Bergdoll and R. Newman, Examining Velázquez, New Haven and London 1988.
26 Veliz 1986 (cited in note 22), p. 68.
27 We are grateful to Ashok Roy and Rachel Grout for this analysis, carried out in 2001. The pigments were analysed by EDX in the SEM and X-ray diffraction.
28 The FTIR microscopy and GC–MS was carried out by Catherine Higgitt.
29 A band at 1598cm-1 has been observed in the FTIR spectra of Italian paintings that contain coal black (identified by GC–MS). The complex composition of coal makes it difficult to assign the band, but it does appear to be characteristic of the pigment.
30 M. Spring, R. Grout and R. White, ‘Black Earths: A Study of Unusual Black and Dark Grey Pigments used by Artists in the Sixteenth Century’, National Gallery Technical Bulletin, 24, 2003, pp. 96–114.
31 Veliz 1986 (cited in note 22), p. 136. Hidalgo’s term Carbón de piedra molida has been translated as coal. See note 9, p. 211.
32 EDX analysis of the smalt particles showed that the potassium content was very low at only around 2 wt% oxide, which suggests that alkali leaching has occurred and that the smalt is therefore deteriorated. The cobalt content was between 4 and 6 wt% oxide, which also suggests that it was not originally so pale in colour.
33 The smalt was identified by EDX analysis.
34 McKim-Smith et al 1988 (cited in note 25). Z. Veliz, ‘Aspects of Drawing and Painting in Seventeenth Century Spanish Treatises’, Looking Through Paintings, E. Hermens ed., London 1998, pp. 295–318. The use of preliminary drawing and the finished appearance of paintings were much-debated issues in early seventeenth-century Spanish treatises, such as Vincente Carducho’s Diàlogos de la Pintura, published in 1633, and Francisco Pacheco’s Arte de la Pintura, published in 1649, eleven years after his death. These authors expressed preferences for dibujo and looked towards a model of painting that had become established practice in Italy during the first half of the sixteenth century, particularly in the drawings of Raphael and Michelangelo (McKim-Smith et al., p. 20). In his treatise, Pacheco acknowledges a changing taste regarding the appearance of paintings and the use of drawing, an approach termed colorido and exemplified by a later generation of artists such as Velázquez, Zurbarán and Murillo, who looked towards late sixteenth-century Venetian painting. The loose expressive brushwork of artists such as Titian, whose alterations remained visible in the final image, thereby displaying a lack of regard for preparatory drawings, was an important influence on seventeenth- century Spanish painting technique.
35 G. McKim-Smith et al. (cited in note 25), p. 80.
36 G. McKim-Smith et al. (cited in note 25).
37 In the painting, the right side of Carlos’s profile has been almost completely removed in a past cleaning and is now extensively retouched.
38 C. Garrido Pérez (cited in note 23). X-radiographs of Queen Mariana of Austria, Prado Collection are illustrated on p. 528 and p. 530.
39 Mazo’s Child in Ecclesiastical Dress, 1660–7, Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, Acc.no. 51.364.
40 Although this piece of curtain at the upper left is present in the version belonging to the Museo de El Greco in Toledo, Spain (plate 5), it was not included in another known version of the picture, formerly in Sir Francis Cook’s collection, but now in the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico.
41 No details are available concerning the 1913 cleaning treatment. It is unclear whether old varnish and restoration layers were completely removed at this time or whether the painting’s appearance was superficially improved by removing layers of dust and grime without recourse to any further work, as might be expected of a treatment of a new acquisition.
42 Analysis using GC–MS of the restoration layers over the grey wall, carried out by Raymond White and Catherine Higgitt in the National Gallery Scientific Department, showed that they had been executed in a heat-bodied linseed oil medium and that a layer of dammar varnish was present between the repaints and the original colour. It is possible to date the old restoration layers on the painting to some time after the early nineteenth century since the distillation processes necessary for the production of dammar were unknown before this time.
43 GC–MS analysis of the varnish applied in 1960 was carried out by Raymond White and Catherine Higgitt in the National Gallery Scientific Department.

Series editor Ashok Roy

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