Focus on this artwork and discuss the Description.
Velázquez sought to reinvigorate 16th-century court portraiture, which was then, according to art historian Javier Portús, "petrified into a rigid format ... with its clichés of gesture and deportment". As an official court portrait, the painting adheres to convention, with every attempt made to convey a sense of Mariana's majesty. Her extravagant taste in clothes and jewellery is evident, but a modern view is that she was a rather plain looking woman in an unhappy marriage, perhaps lacking in much of the elegance that Velázquez attributed to her.The painting is composed of harmonious shades of whites, blacks and reds. The scarlet velvet curtain lends the painting a theatrical air. Its material and colour are similar to the long table behind her, on top of which is placed a gilt clock in the shape of a tower. The chair and table signify her royal status, while the clock draws attention to her duties as Queen consort and suggests the virtue of prudence.Velázquez seemingly conducts an in-depth examination of Mariana's character. She is depicted as elegant and extravagantly dressed in the height of contemporary fashion, but with a sulky expression. According to Hagen, Mariana felt constricted by the demands of court, and suffered from "boredom, loneliness, home-sickness and illness in consequence of her never ending pregnancies [which] transformed the lively girl into that willful, mulish German". Her pout reappears in several of Velázquez's later portraits, including Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo's 1666 Mariana of Spain in Mourning, painted just after her husband died and the year her daughter Margarita, then twelve, was sent to marry her uncle, Emperor Leopold I.
The subject has an unusually rigid and stiff pose; her upper body and head seem to almost suffocate underneath her black dress. The dress is supported by a wide and stiff farthingale; its width emphasised by the broad lace collar and the horizontal patterns of its trimmed borders. Her unusually pale skin is heavily painted in rouge, making it almost doll-like under her wig and wide head-dress. Her face is painted with thick brush strokes and layers of opaque paint that thin towards the edges, where they appear, from radiography, to have been applied in quick dabs. Although only 19 years old at the time, she stands in the "formal and upright, Catholic manner" expected of contemporary Spanish royalty.Mariana holds a lace handkerchief in her left hand. Her farthingale and bodice reflect her interest in high fashion. Her dress is extensively lined with silver braids and decorated with red ribbon. Her many pieces of jewellery include bracelets, gold chains and an elaborate gold brooch pinned on her chest. Her brown hair is adorned with red ribbons and a series of braids that extend widely on either side. She wears a large red and white plume which pictorially acts to frame her face. Her left hand holds a large and elaborately folded white cloth, whose depiction, in its attention to line and abandonment of scale, has been described by art historian Antonio Domínguez Ortiz as "worthy of El Greco".
radiography Antonio Domínguez Ortiz Leopold El Greco bodice brooch farthingale plume Spanish Queen consort prudence virtue left Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo braid