When Velázquez came to the Spanish court in the early 1620s, he also came to be surrounded by the most spectacular paintings collection that had ever been assembled in western Europe. It was a vital moment in the history of the Habsburg art collection. In these years, the renovation of the seat of Spanish power was nearing completion, and the rehang of the royal art collection was about to begin. The âNew Roomâ at the center of the palace was the first gallery to be redecorated, likely under the auspices of Gaspar de Guzmán y Pimental, the Count-Duke of Olivares and then a power player at the court of Philip IV.1 This room was to serve as the site of representation of the Habsburg monarchy before international audiences and demanded a suite of paintings befitting its political charge. Its centerpiece was Titianâs Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg, a monumental equestrian portrait of the founder of the Habsburg dynasty in Spain and Philip IVâs most illustrious ancestor (fig. 1.1).2 In subject matter and scale, the painting was suitably commanding. Velázquez arrived in Madrid just before the campaign to redecorate the New Room began. He was therefore present for the installation of the Mühlberg portrait in the site that it would occupy for the next century.
Titian, Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg, 1548, oil on canvas, 335 à 283 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, P000410
Image © Ar chivo Fotográfico Museo N acional del Prado
The installation that Velázquez witnessed was no empty gesture. By the time Velázquez arrived at the court of Philip IV, Titianâs Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg was the most celebrated painting in the royal art collection. At various points in its historiography, Titianâs equestrian portrait has been described as âthe image par excellence of the [Habsburg] dynasty and the one with the greatest influence over the course of history,â and âthe foundational work of the image of power of the Spanish Habsburgs.â3 The hang of this painting in the New Room was one of the factors that made it so. The move of this painting to the center of an ambitious decorative program mounted in the most symbolically charged gallery in the royal palace accorded it a starring role within the royal art collection as a whole, tying the fame of Titian at the Habsburg court perhaps to this canvas more than any other. The reception of Titianâs great painting was demonstrably uneven since its production in the mid-sixteenth century, shifting through the decades until just before the coronation of Philip IV, when several factors converged to bring the painting into visibility once more. The display of this work in the site of representation of the Spanish monarchy was an intervention in this changing critical fortune, the culminating gesture in the paintingâs reevaluation. It established definitively what the painting meant for Philip IV and therefore what it would mean for Velázquez, his portraitist.
Velázquezâs involvement in the constitution of the decorative program of the New Room in these years was in no way curatorial; his only contributions were made as a painter, and even then, only making paintings that Philip IV asked of him. It is likely no coincidence, however, that his first major assignment for Philip IV was to produce a painting that directly responded to a work from the royal art collection and that was intended for display within the very same gallery that housed its model. Shortly after the Mühlberg portrait was hung in the New Room, Philip IV commissioned from Velázquez an equestrian portrait of himself for display across from it. For Philip IV, this commission was the means by which to fashion his political persona in the example of his illustrious great-grandfather. For Velázquez, it was his first direct confrontation with his predecessor and most distinguished forebear in the history of Habsburg portraiture. The events spanning the installation of the Mühlberg portrait in the New Room and the hang of Velázquezâs commission in the same gallery were brief and unceremonious, taking place over the course of just a few years. Nevertheless, this early episode in Velázquezâs career at the Habsburg court dramatizes one of the essential conditions of its unfolding in the decades to follow. As court portraitist, Velázquez would make a name for himself by following Titianâs shining example; this is well known. But his access to âTitianââor whatever ghost of Titian haunted the Spanish courtâwas mediated by the contents of the royal art collection that had survived from Titianâs day into that of Velázquez. Velázquezâs understanding of who Titian was as a painter to the Habsburgs was surely determined by the biographies and treatises that had been written about the master, renowned as he was across Europe, but it was also determined by the objects that remained within the royal palace and, just as importantly, how those objects were framed by the palace walls.4 Titian was present to Velázquez in paintings like Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg, in the galleries of the Alcázar; the commission to produce an equestrian portrait to match it demanded that Velázquez meet him there.
1 Titianâs Equestrian Portrait of Charles V
The history of the exhibition of the royal art collection in the New Room begins in earnest after 1622. This is the year that the construction of this room on the south façade of the Alcázar was finally completed.5 The reconstruction of the south façade of the palace had been initiated in 1608, and changes to the façade had necessitated a reevaluation of the adjacent rooms within the palace walls. In 1618, under the auspices of court architect Juan Gómez de Mora, the decision was made to construct the New Room on the main floor of the palace just behind the very center of the façade.6 In the following years, the interior architecture of this gallery was completely refurbished: the ceiling was rebuilt, the floor was finished, and the carpentry of the doors and windows was redone.7 Toward the end of 1622, the room was finally ornamented with marble trimmings, and the cornice was gilded.8 From this date onward and into the next few decades, paintings and other objects were moved in and out of the New Room in a continuously changing decorative scheme. Most of these came from the existing holdings of the Habsburg art collection; some were commissioned for this purpose. As with the Mühlberg portrait, the paintings that were installed and de-installed in this gallery in the succeeding years fit the galleryâs intended use as the site of royal ceremonies and especially the reception of foreign dignitaries. Always large in scale and dramatic in their subject matter, these included portraits of Habsburg rulers, like Titianâs Philip II Offering the Infante Fernando to Victory (fig. 1.2) and Velázquezâs 1628 portrait of Philip III, Philip III and the Expulsion of the Moriscos (lost);9 scenes from Roman history and mythology, like Vicente Carduchoâs painting of Scipio Africanus and Eugenio Cajésâs painting of Agamemnon (both lost); and allegories like Titianâs Religion Assisted by Spain (fig. 1.3) and his Tityus (fig. 1.4) and Sisyphus (fig. 1.5), paintings better known then as now as the furias (furies).10 These paintings and the many others assembled and reassembled in this decorative program evoked the themes with which the room itself became associated, including the defense of the Catholic faith against heresy, the purported mission of the Habsburg dynasty since its foundation; the exaltation of the Habsburg monarchy; and the legitimacy and continuity of Habsburg rule.11
Titian, Philip II Offering the Infante Fernando to Victory, 1573â75, oil on canvas, 335 Ã 274 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, P000431
Image © Ar chivo Fotográfico Museo N acional del Prado
Titian, Religion Assisted by Spain, 1572â75, oil on canvas, 168 Ã 168 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, P000430
Image © Ar chivo Fotográfico Museo N acional del Prado
Titian, Tityus, ca. 1565, oil on canvas, 253 Ã 217 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, P000427
Image © Ar chivo Fotográfico Museo N acional del Prado
Titian, Sisyphus, 1548â49, oil on canvas, 237 Ã 216 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, P000426
Image © Ar chivo Fotográfico Museo N acional del Prado
Velázquez had arrived at the Spanish court in Madrid in August 1623, less than a year after the completion of the New Room, and was officially contracted to work as painter to the king the following month.12 The earliest record of paintings entering the New Room dates to November 1623, when eight worksâthe first of them Emperor Charles V at Mühlbergâwere summoned from the Royal Palace of El Pardo for display in this gallery.13 A payment was registered for a gilded frame for the Mühlberg portrait on September 11, 1624, suggesting that the painting was finally installed on the gallery walls around this date.14 The centrality of this painting to the decorative program of this gallery cannot be overstated, and it is little wonder: as an image of the founder of the Habsburg dynasty in battle, it seems to exemplify so readily the glorious vision of the Spanish monarchy at work in the gallery. The painting was produced to commemorate a specific event in the history of Spanish politics: the military victory to which the paintingâs present title refers. The battle that took place at Mühlberg at dawn on April 24, 1547, was decisive. It brought an end to a war with the Protestant Schmalkaldic League and thus reestablished the political authority of Charles V over the whole of the Holy Roman Empire. The painting was commissioned shortly after this battle took place, and its contents adhered closely to the account produced by Luis de Ãvila y Zúñiga, whose official record of the battle appeared in his 1550 Comentario ⦠de la Guerra en Alemaña, hecha de Carlo V. Maximo, Emperador Romano, Rey de España.15 Much of what is visible on Titianâs canvas can be traced to Ãvilaâs account, including the emperorâs dark brown horse, dressed in a caparison of crimson velvet with gold trim; his white and gilded armor, red taffeta sash, and German helmet; and the half-pike he holds in his hands.16 Even the âbleedingâ sky over the bank of the river Elbe, imagined here as a mixture of red, orange, and black tones, is recorded in Ãvilaâs text.17 Writers of palace inventories quickly elided the details of this particular battle in their written descriptions of the work, none of them directly invoking the events that had taken place at Mühlberg that had occasioned its painting, but the canvas remained the most compelling surviving image of Charles V in victory on the battlefield.18 As a painting of the founder of the Habsburg dynasty in military conquest, it is now widely regarded as the very image of the Spanish monarchy whose glorification was the New Roomâs apparent purpose.
For many years, however, this was not how contemporaries saw it. By the time Velázquez had arrived at the Spanish court, two records existed of the history of art under the Habsburgs: a written record, in the form of the treatises and histories that had been written on Spanish rulers and their painters, and an object record, in the paintings and sculptures that had survived from the reign of Charles V into that of Philip IV. Until just before the ascent of Philip IV to the throne, Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg had factored importantly in neither. The first surviving record of the painting after its production suggests that shortly after it was made, it was taken to Brussels and absorbed into the art collection of Mary of Hungary.19 When Philip II inherited the art collection of Mary of Hungary in 1558, he used its contents to assemble a portrait gallery in the Pardo palace, a hunting lodge just outside the limits of Madrid. The gallery consisted of portraits of members of the Habsburg dynasty, arranged as a genealogy with Charles V positioned as its progenitor. Portraits of Titian and Anthonis Mor, the authors of many of the portraits exhibited in the gallery, were included as well. The painting chosen to represent Charles V in this hang was not Titianâs equestrian portrait but a full-length portrait of Charles V in armor cut down to three-quarters to fit (fig. 1.6).20 As with the equestrian portrait, Titian made this painting during his visit to the imperial court at Augsburg in 1548 in celebration of Charles Vâs victory in battle.21 While this painting enjoyed pride of place in the Pardo rehang, the equestrian portrait, by contrast, was stored in one of the rooms of the Casa del Tesoro in the Alcázar, alongside other portraits like Titianâs Philip II Offering the Infante Fernando to Victory and Justus Tielâs Allegory of the Education of Philip III (MNP, P001846).22 Despite their ideological charge, all three were so irregular in format and typology as to preclude their inclusion in the Pardo display, which was overwhelmingly ordered by these criteria. If the exhibition of portraits at the Pardo palace was in any way a genealogical record of the history of Habsburg rulers beginning with Charles V (and with it, a genealogical record of the painters supported by their patronage), Titianâs singular equestrian portrait had, at the time, no role to play in the material constitution of that history.23
Juan Pantoja de la Cruz (after Titian), The Emperor Charles V, 1605, oil on canvas, 183 Ã 110 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, P001033
Image © Archivo Fotográfico Museo Nacional del Prado
In written narratives of the painterâs own life, Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg was similarly invisible. Titian appeared frequently in Italian Renaissance art literature as a model of professional success and social elevation thanks to his famous appointment as painter to Charles V. Over the course of what are now believed to have been a series of meetings and a small number of portraits, Charles V established a relationship with Titian as patron and painter overtly modeled on that of Alexander the Great and Apelles. The role that individual paintings played in the series of events that led to this exemplary relationship remains a mystery, and written sources were consistently so imprecise in their descriptions of Titianâs early portraits that even identifying these works and establishing a conclusive timeline of their production are still nearly impossible tasks.24 The story of the development of the privileged relationship cultivated between Charles V and Titian appears in the treatises and biographies of Ludovico Dolce, Raffaello Borghini, Federico Zuccaro, and Giorgio Vasari. While describing Titianâs service to Charles V as a portrait painter, which was, in their thinking, the foundation upon which this relationship stood, all of them mention a single portrait described in such vague terms that no single work from Titianâs oeuvre has ever been irrefutably identified with it. In order of their writing, their accounts read as follows:
In that time the Emperor Charles V came to Bologna; because Titian da Cador, most excellent painter came to make the portrait of his Majesty. ⦠And with so much grace did [Titian] make his image: that in addition to his name, in this [Titian] acquired 1000 scudi, which the Emperor gave to [him].25
But continuing on the greatness of princes, what shall I say of Charles V, who, as an emulator of Alexander the Great, for [all] the many cares and almost continuous travails, which matters of war bring him, does not stop turning his thinking often to this art, which he loves and appreciates so much, that the fame of the divine Titian having reached his ears, [Charles V] called him to the court with kind and affectionate invitations twice: where beyond having honored him like the first people that were at this court, conferred to him the greatest privileges, permissions, and prizes: and for one single portrait, which [Titian] made of him in Bologna, he ordered that 1,000 scudi be given to him.26
It is said that in the year 1530, the emperor Charles V being in Bologna, the Cardinal Ippolito deâ Medici, called Titian there by means of Pietro Aretino, where he painted a most beautiful portrait of His Majesty entirely in armor that pleased [him] so much that he made 1000 scudi be given to him.27
The most famous portraits done by [Titian] are these, of the Emperor Charles V, done many times, and the last time that [Titian] portrayed [him] he made [Titian] a knight and 200 scudi [were] allotted to him at the beginning of the year by the Camera of Naples, and every time [Titian] did his portrait he would have 1000 scudi as a gift.28
Still no less in our times have there been such excellent imitators of the truth, than some things which have unexpectedly fooled many people, as with among others a portrait of Charles V by the hand of the so very famous painter Titian.29
These writers consistently invoke a portrait but refuse any descriptive information that unequivocally identifies that portrait with any single surviving object. If legend had it that the relationship between painter and patron turned around a single portrait, we may never know what exactly that portrait looked like, or what became of it; then again, there is nothing to suggest that Dolce, Zuccaro, Borghini, or Vasari knew what it looked like either.30 The Bologna portrait in these texts perhaps functions less as historical object than as literary device, a rhetorical trope around which to structure a narrative. But if Titian did in truth produce a single portrait of Charles V at Bologna so compelling that it forged a bond between them as painter and patron, that portrait was certainly notâand, perhaps more importantly, was never necessarily thought to beâEmperor Charles V at Mühlberg.
Just before the ascent of Philip IV to the Spanish throne, however, the critical fortune of Titianâs equestrian portrait of Charles V would take a conclusive turn, the object record and the written record uniting in this single, unmistakably singular work. On March 13 and 14, 1604, the Pardo palace was burned nearly to the ground. Of all the galleries in the Pardo that were damaged by the fire, the portrait gallery suffered more than any other. Witnesses to the fire claimed in written testimonials that they had made every effort to remove the paintings from the walls of the portrait gallery, but the portraits were firmly affixed to the walls with plaster and therefore impossible to remove. All of the portraits by Titian, Anthonis Mor, Alonso Sánchez Coello, and Sofonisba Anguissola were lost, including Titianâs full-length-turned-three-quarter-length portrait of Charles V.31 When the galleries at the Pardo were finally reinstalled, Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg was among the canvases selected to replace the lost portrait gallery, filling a newly made gap in the material record of the Habsburg rulers and their painters.32 It remained there until its eventual transfer to the New Room in 1623. And when the story of the life and career of Charles Vâs favorite painter was rewritten in 1622, the equestrian portrait was suddenly accorded a starring role in this history. In an anonymous biography of the painterâs life, commissioned by Titianâs heirs and published in Venice just before Philip IV took the Spanish throne, the events of Titianâs life would coalesce around the production and critical success of Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg:
But above all [Titian] was cherished and loved by the unconquered emperor Charles V, who, imitating the heroic deeds of Alexander the Great, also wished to follow his example in his love of painting. And if [Alexander] wanted a Homer and had an Apelles, [Charles V] had Titian. Having gone ⦠to Bologna in 1533, where His Majesty was to establish peace in Italy, [Titian] was unable to pay his respects to him the same day that he arrived. His Majesty having learned of [Titianâs] arrival, he went through the city for an entire day looking for him with much perseverance, and the next day, finally in his presence, he received him with incredible joy and great honors, named him his knight, and gave him an annual salary, as one can see from his very noble and genuine Privilege. So as to make known that he was worthy of so many honors in the eyes of the greatest princes in the world ⦠he painted the portrait of Charles V in white armor on a fierce horse, which he put at the end of a room on the ground floor. One saw [in this painting] the Majesty of the Emperorâs usual appearance, painted from life, and the movement of the horse [painted] with so much grace, that he lacked nothing but vital spirits. And if a person brought faith to his eyes, he would deceive himself and believe that [Charles V] was once again present there [before him]. Thus, if Zeuxis [was able to] fool a bird by painting grapes, and Parrhasius [did] the same to him [by painting] a curtain, Titian, who was not inferior to them nor to anyone else, fooled almost all of the most important barons and knights of Charles V. Passing through the room where the painting [hung], they revered it, thinking that it really was their true and living Emperor. This brought Titian so much glory, that it is no wonder that he was desired, revered, and loved by everyone. He made still more works of exquisite excellence in Augsburg, where he was called by the king of the Romans in the year 1548.33
This version of the story, which collapses the timeline of Titianâs meetings with Charles V and his eventual designation as Charles Vâs official painter into virtually a single masterstroke, was subsequently popularized by Carlo Ridolfi, whose description of the work approximates the appearance of Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg even more closely:
Having learned of the arrival of Titian, the emperor ordered him to appear before him as soon as he came, receiving him with signs of great honor, and wanted [Titian] to put his hand to his portrait without delay, who represented [him] with graceful majesty, dressed in gleaming armor studded with precious ornaments, on a bay horse sprinkled with stars and covered with a rich harness, which, proud [to carry] such noble weight, with a magnificent bearing, blowing generous audacity from its nostrils, gnawed its gilded bit, while stepping proudly on the ground. And so vividly did [Titian] depict that glorious monarch, that the painting [having been] placed at the far end of a hall was believed at first glance to be the Emperor, by which Caesar was astonished, seeing himself at life size in this way by Titianâs hands, content that his image was revered by everyone. Such reverence and awe came to the Captain Cassandro, upon seeing the image of Alexander painted by the famous Apelles ⦠[When] the Emperor left Bologna, Titian returned to Venice, decorated with honors.34
Ridolfiâs account, in turn, became an indispensable reference text for biographers after him.35 In its general form and content, the established narrative of Charles Vâs early encounters with Titian persisted past the Pardo fire, unencumbered by the disappearance of the objects with which it was interwoven. All the familiar topoi from Titianâs many vite are present in Ridolfi and his anonymous precursor: the privileged relationship to a celebrated patron, the career-making portrait, the conferral of knighthood by the patron to his chosen artist, the meeting that sealed their bond. The lost portrait gallery was reconstituted, and in the same site as before. What changed, more so than anything else, was that the Mühlberg equestrian portrait was reassigned to these narratives and asked to stand in literally and figuratively for the many works that were lost, suddenly shifted from the periphery of two interlocking histories to the very center of both.
It is unclear precisely where or how these records coincided: Could it have been possible for the 1622 biography to have landed in Spain in the years immediately after its publication, or for news of the Pardo rehang to have made it to Venice in time for its writing? Whatever their historical connection, the sudden centrality of the Mühlberg portrait to both the object record in Spain and the written record in Italy suggests a larger shift in the part that the painting had to play in Titianâs international reputation. If nothing else, Titianâs early seventeenth-century biographies likely articulate the same impulses behind the installation of Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg as the centerpiece of the New Room in the mid-1620s, an event that cannot be understood outside of the paintingâs changing reception history since its production a century previous. As an image of the founder of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty victorious in battle, the painting handily served the political purposes of this gallery. This alone may have been enough to explain its inclusion in this hang. But the painting was in addition an object, bound to a moment in time that was key to both the history of Spanish politics and the history of Spanish art; and the changing critical significance bound up in the tethering of Titianâs equestrian portrait to the mythic point of origin of his relationship to Charles V cannot be overstated. In his decree conferring nobility to Titian, Charles V christened the artist the âApelles of [their] centuryâ; in the process, he made of himself a new âAlexander the Great and Augustus Octavian.â36 Reconfigured as the portrait around which this relationship turned, Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg was thus an imperial artifact, the vestige of an event by which Charles V had invented himself as the heir to the Roman emperors. The decision to install it in the New Room in 1624, the site by which Philip IV meant to construct his own image as the heir to Charles V, surely depended on this reconfiguration. It was also, however, the seal of the portraitâs changing reception history, its final ratification.
The hang of the painting in the New Room of the Alcázar palace was the culminating act in the paintingâs rise to stardom between its production for Charles V and its reception by Philip IV. It postdated a long but relatively uneventful history over the course of which the painting was made, transferred over to the care of Mary of Hungary, and ultimately relegated to the palace reserves. On the one hand, this installation surely depended on the reevaluation of the painting leading up to Philip IVâs ascent to the Spanish throne, but on the other, the installation was itself the final step in the making of the Mühlberg portrait as a monument to the Habsburg dynasty. It was a meaning-making gesture that definitively codified the paintingâs significance for Philip IV and his court. No member of the royal house would feel the consequences of this more directly than his court painter.
2 Velázquezâs Equestrian Portrait of Philip IV
The hang of Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg in the New Room in 1624 was the culmination of the coalescing of a narrative around the painting, its provenance, and its perceived role in both the history of Spanish politics and the history of Spanish art, but it would also serve, in turn, as the starting point for new one. The equestrian portrait of Philip IV that Velázquez executed in response to Titianâs equestrian portrait of Charles V represented the new kingâs desire to picture himself in his ancestorâs image. By the time it was selected for display in the New Room, the Mühlberg portrait had come to stand for a model of imperial patronage between ruler and his court painter. When Velázquez received a commission to produce a pendant painting for exhibition in the same space, he was effectively asked to respond to the painting as the gallery had made it, and on that galleryâs very walls.
Of the many paintings that were commissioned for the decorative program of this gallery, Velázquezâs equestrian portrait of Philip IV was likely the first.37 It was installed in the New Room by December of 1625, only one year after the installation of the Mühlberg portrait.38 Although Velázquezâs painting no longer survives, telling details regarding its appearance are revealed in period documents of different kinds. The first record of the work dates to August 22, 1625, when the first of a number of payments was registered for a gilded frame for it, sized to match that of Titian.39 This payment describes âa large frame for the portrait of his Majesty that is in the new room with its stretcher of 13 3/4 pies tall and 11 3/4 wide ⦠[whose] molding conforms to that of the emperor.â40 A more detailed description survives in a travel diary written by Cassiano dal Pozzo, the secretary of Cardinal Francesco Barberini who went to the Spanish court with the cardinal on a diplomatic visit in 1626. In his diary, he describes Velázquezâs painting as it appeared hanging in the New Room of the Alcázar across from Titianâs portrait of Charles V on May 29 of that year. He mentions several paintings by Titian, including the following:
Above these is a Tityus said [to be] entirely by Titian, larger than life-size by half; [what] follows [is] a great portrait of Charles V armed on horseback in the act of riding at full speed, with a beautiful landscape, and [what] follows [is] another Tityus responding to the other, by the hand of the Spaniard El Mudo. Opposite the portrait of Charles V at the other end of the room is a portrait of the current King armed and on horseback, life-size, [with] a beautiful landscape, and sky, entirely by the hand of a Spanish painter, well situated in the middle of two other Tityi.41
No more precise description of the paintingâs final appearance than that of Cassiano dal Pozzo survives from Velázquezâs lifetime.42
However little is known about its appearance, there can be no doubt that Velázquez made this portrait with Titianâs model in mind. Titianâs painting of Charles V on horseback was the first of its kind in the history of easel painting.43 Velázquezâs equestrian portrait of Philip IV can have had no clearer prototype. Period descriptions reveal very little about the ways that Velázquezâs approach to this subject may have departed from Titianâs, but they propose substantial similarities: the depiction of the subject in armor, the situation of the central figure in a landscape, and especially the scale of the painting (which was, it is worth repeating, sized to match the Mühlberg portrait). Philip IV had a real stake in the choice of this model: as scholars have consistently pointed out, Philip IV and Velázquez, too, sought to model their relationship on that of Alexander and Apelles, indeed in emulation of Charles V and Titian, whose relationship was modeled on that same ancient trope.44 By the time Philip IV inherited it, Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg was among the only surviving witnesses to this relationship between Habsburg patron and his painter, the immediate product of the climactic meeting where that relationship was forged. In the commission and production of an equestrian portrait in response to Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg, Philip IV repeats a defining moment in the history of Spanish art, with Velázquezâs execution of the work an artistic performance directly inspired by a preexisting object, and by the performanceâhowever imaginedâthat had brought that object into being.
By all accounts, the painting was an immediate success. Francisco Pacheco, Velázquezâs father-in-law, teacher, and first biographer, claimed in his Arte de la Pintvra, Sv Antigvedad y Grandezas: Descrivense los hombres eminentes que ha auido en ella, assi antiguos como modernos; del dibujo, y colorido; del pintar al temple, al olio, de la iluminacion, y estofado; del pintar al fresco; de las encarnaciones, de polimento, y de mate; del dorado, bruñido, y mate. Y enseña el modo de pintar todas las pinturas sagradas (henceforth Arte de la Pintura) that the king who commissioned it was so pleased with the work that he exhibited it in the Calle Mayor before installing it in the royal palace.45 Several sonnets were written to the portrait, largely praising the ruler it depicted and the lifelike manner in which he was painted.46 None expressed so clearly the paintingâs historical stakes as that of Pacheco.47 In Francisco Pachecoâs thinking, Titianâs professional success was defined by the proximity to Charles V that his work as a portraitist allowed him. Invoking the most common trope in Titianâs written vite, Pacheco christens Titian the Apelles to Charles Vâs Alexander the Great.48 His sonnet to Velázquezâs equestrian portrait concludes with this same trope, stating that âthe Planet [King], kindly to such a Heaven, will uplift [Velázquezâs] name with new glory, as he is more than Alexander, and [Velázquez] his Apelles.â49 Just as Titianâs equestrian portrait of Charles V was accorded a role in his biographies as the seal of their professional relationship, so too did Velázquezâs equestrian portrait become, for Pacheco, the means by which Velázquez established himself as the Apelles to Philip IVâs Alexander. One way of reading this is to say that Pacheco here imposes a pattern from literature onto historical events, making the latter conform to the former; another is to say that Pacheco simply registers the degree to which the events unfolding at the Habsburg court were themselves patterned on existing narratives, and on the literary tropes that gave those narratives legible structure. In his elegy to Velázquezâs equestrian portrait, Pacheco affirms Velázquezâs place in a lineage of painters with privileged relationships to patrons that found its ancient origins in Apelles and Alexander and its early modern apex in Titian and Charles V, and seals the intended role of Velázquezâs equestrian portrait of Philip IV as the object around which that lineage was made to turn.
There is a further point worth making here: Cassiano dal Pozzoâs description of the painting appears within an ekphrasis of the picture gallery in which it was exhibited. Just as significant as the commission and production of one painting in response to another is the display of the painting in full view of its model. Dal Pozzoâs diary records what was likely the first installation program of the New Room. However incomplete at the time of his visit and however fragmentary his account of it, the decorative program of the New Room was clearly bookended by equestrian portraits, that of Charles V appearing flanked by two of Titianâs furias on one wall, by Titian, and that of Philip IV appearing flanked by the remaining furias on the opposite wall, by Velázquez.50 Whatever efficacy the painting had as an expression of the inscription of Philip IV and Velázquez in a lineage of patrons and painters that included Charles V and Titian can only have been amplified by this display strategy. The context from which Philip IVâs equestrian portrait derives this meaning is this other equestrian portrait, and the display of Velázquezâs portrait across from its predecessor, in a hang symmetrical to that of its predecessor, articulates the patterned performances on which the meaning of Velázquezâs work depends. If Philip IVâs intention was to use the hang of this gallery to establish his political identity in relation to the memory of Charles V (and Velázquezâs opportunity, in tandem, was thus to establish his artistic identity in relation to the memory of Titian), this object was produced to conform to this narrative and to enable that narrativeâs inscription on the walls of this gallery. To whatever extent the production of Velázquezâs equestrian portrait of Philip IV could be considered the willful repetition of an imagined historical event, its exhibition alongside Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg was the deliberate staging of a history repeating.
Juan Bautista MartÃnez del Mazo and Diego Velázquez after Peter Paul Rubens, Philip IV of Spain on Horseback, ca. 1645, oil on canvas, 393 à 267 cm, Gallerie degli Uffizi, inv. 1890, no. 792
Image © Gabinetto Fotografico delle Gallerie degli Uffizi
The success of Velázquezâs equestrian portrait of Philip IV was woefully short-lived: In 1628, Velázquezâs equestrian portrait was replaced by one by Peter Paul Rubens, then an ambassador at the Spanish court whose international star handily eclipsed the name of a Sevillian upstart; the painting is now known through a surviving copy (fig. 1.7).51 Sonnets to the painting proclaimed Rubens the new Apelles to Philip IVâs Alexander, jeopardizingâhowever fleetinglyâVelázquezâs claim as Philip IVâs favorite painter.52 It was an undeniable setback in Velázquezâs early career at the court. Nevertheless, there is a lesson to be learned here, just as Velázquez surely learned it in the 1620s. The installation of Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg in the New Room in 1624 was a kind of prismatic moment in the history of the royal art collection and its exhibition. On the one hand, it was conclusive in the assignment of a new signification to the Mühlberg portrait, and with it, the establishment of the centrality of this object in the history of art in the century preceding its reception by Philip IV. On the other, it was the starting point for a new historical argument constituted by the objects assembled around the Mühlberg portrait and in dialogue with it, and none more so than the pendant that was Velázquezâs equestrian portrait. In the case of Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg, a narrative was rewritten to conform to a surviving object; in that of Velázquezâs equestrian portrait of Philip IV, an object was fabricated to facilitate a desired narrative. In both, the walls of a gallery were the site where the significance of these works was negotiated, assigned, and even reassigned. Velázquezâs name at the Habsburg court would come to depend on the legacy of Titian, the most successful painter to the Habsburgs before him.53 The first hang of the New Room in the 1620s demonstrates the extent to which the royal art collection and its changing reception on the walls of the Alcázar were among the conditions of that legacy. Velázquez could not have known then the extent to which it would eventually serve to secure him his own.
Orso 1986, pp. 112â13. On this figure, see especially Elliott 1986.
The bibliography on this painting is rightfully rich. Accounts of the painting are reliably included in the broader literature on Titianâs life and career (Rosand 1982; Checa Cremades 1994b; Freedman 1995; Falomir Faus 2003), the history of portraiture under the Habsburgs (Bodart 2011), the visual culture of Charles V (Checa Cremades 2000a; Cascione 2006), and the history of Spanish arms and armor (Frieder 2008; Soler del Campo 2010), among other topics. On the Mühlberg portrait alone, see Beinert 1946; Hope 1996; Checa Cremades 2001; Checa Cremades and Falomir Faus 2001; Moffitt 2001; and Falomir Faus 2010.
Checa Cremades 2000b, p. 152: âla imagen por excelencia de la dinastÃa y la de mayor influencia a lo largo de la historiaâ; and Bodart 2011, p. 270: âlâoeuvre fondatrice de lâimage du pouvoir des Habsbourg dâEspagne.â
By the time of his death in 1660, Velázquez possessed a relatively substantial library that included a number of treatises and biographies with references to Titianâs life and work. Among these were the treatises of Giorgio Vasari and Federico Zuccaro, which will factor importantly in the pages that follow (Sánchez Cantón 1925, p. 400, no. 100, and p. 392, no. 30, respectively; Ruiz Pérez 1999, pp. 208â9, cat. 79). Other treatises in Velázquezâs collection that made mention of Titian were those of Gaspar Gutiérrez de los RÃos, Giovanni Baglioni, and eventually Francisco Pacheco (Sánchez Cantón 1925, p. 394, no. 46, p. 401, no. 108, and p. 394, no. 43, respectively; Ruiz Pérez 1999, pp. 210â11, cat. 80, pp. 212â13, cat. 81, pp. 230â31, cat. 89, and pp. 252â53, cat. 100).
For histories of this room (addressing, to varying degrees, its construction, use, and decoration), see Bottineau 1956â58, pt. 2, pp. 34â47; Crawford Volk 1980; Orso 1986, pp. 32â117; Barbeito DÃez 1992, pp. 129â 36; Checa Cremades 1994a, pp. 391â94; RodrÃguez Rebollo 2006, pp. 96â109; Pierguidi 2011; Barbeito DÃez 2015; and MartÃnez Leiva and RodrÃguez Rebollo 2015, pp. 58â70.
On the reconstruction of the south façade of the Alcázar, see Gérard 1978.
Barbeito DÃez 2015, p. 24.
See Azcárate 1960b, p. 360; Crawford Volk 1980, p. 172; Barbeito DÃez 1992, p. 132; DÃaz Padrón 2004, p. 85; and MartÃnez Leiva and RodrÃguez Rebollo 2015, p. 61.
Although lost, this painting was the subject of a recent exhibition that offers a hypothesis regarding its original appearance (see Elliott et al. 2017).
On Titianâs furias, see especially the excellent contributions in Falomir Faus 2014a.
See Crawford Volk 1980, p. 168; Orso 1986, pp. 87â107; and RodrÃguez Rebollo 2006, pp. 102â9.
Francisco Pacheco tells us the date that Velázquez arrived in Madrid (Pacheco 1649, p. 102; see also Pacheco 1990, p. 204; Pacheco 2018, p. 34). The archive of the royal palace conserves all surviving documentation of his contracting as court painter (Archivo General de Palacio, Personal, Caja 1084, exp. 9). Confirmation of Velázquezâs official hire as court painter in October of 1623 can be found in AGP, Administración General, Cedulas Reales, Tomo XII, fols. 179v and 180r; and in the documents published in Corpus velazqueño 2000, vol. 1, p. 42, docs. 23â24. For a comprehensive account of the events surrounding Velázquezâs arrival to the court of Philip IV, see Brown 1986b, ch. 2.
Barbeito DÃez 1992, p. 132, n. 215.
Orso 1986, p. 44.
That this text was an immediate source for Titianâs painting is asserted in Soler del Campo 2001, pp. 87â90; Bodart 2006, pp. 284â85; Bodart 2011, pp. 255â60; and Checa Cremades 2013c, pp. 257â60. Fernando Checa further makes the claim that Luis de Ãvila y Zúñigaâs text used Charles Vâs own Memorias as a source material in Checa Cremades 2013c, p. 258, thus tying the painting even more closely to a specific historical event.
Ãvila y Zúñiga 1550, fol. 85r.
Ãvila y Zúñiga 1550, fol. 93v: âsangriento.â
For records of the painting in inventories from 1558 to 1986, see MartÃnez Leiva and RodrÃguez Rebollo 2015, pp. 700â701, no. 76. On the shift in perception of this painting from Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg to âequestrian portrait of Charles V,â see also Bodart 2011, pp. 268â70.
For the paintingâs complete provenance, see Wethey 1971, pp. 89â90.
Kusche 1991b, p. 262. Although lost, the appearance of this painting is now known thanks to copies of Titianâs full-length original made by Juan Pantoja de la Cruz in 1605 and 1607â8 for the Escorial (GarcÃa-FrÃas Checa 2001, pp. 408â9).
GarcÃa-FrÃas Checa 2001, p. 408.
A concise but informative account of the distribution of artworks in the Alcázar palace under the reign of Philip II can be found in Checa Cremades 1994a, pp. 379â81. A brief account of the exhibition of Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg in the Alcázar palace between 1600 and the fire that burned the palace down in 1734 can be found in Falomir Faus 2001, pp. 82â83. An abbreviated list of primary sources by which we can locate Mühlberg between its production and its entry into the Museo Nacional del Prado is compiled in Wethey 1971, pp. 89â90.
For complete accounts of the decoration of the Pardo palace during the reign of Philip II, see Woodall 1995; Kusche 1991a; Kusche 1991b; and Kusche 1992.
Bodart 2011, p. 45. See also Falomir Faus 2000, p. 161.
Vasari 1550, p. 779: âVenne in questo tempo lâImperator Carlo V. a Bologna; perche Tiziano da Cador, pittore eccellentissimo venne a ritrarre sua Maestà . ⦠Et tanto co[n] grazia espresse la effigie di quello: che oltre il nome, che in quella cosa acquistò deâ mille scudi, che lâImperatore donò a Tiziano.â
Dolce 1557, p. 17v: âMa seguendo le grandezze deâ Prencipi, che dirò di Carlo Quinto, ilquale, come emulo di Alessandro Magno, per le molte cure, e per i trauagli quasi continui, che gli apportano le cose della guerra, no[n] lascia di uolger molte uolte il pe[n]siero a questâarte, laquele ama et apprezza tanto, che essendogli peruenuta al lâorecchie la fama del diuin Titiano, co[n] benigni et amoreuoli inuiti due uolte lo chiamò alla corte: doue oltre allo hauerlo honorato al pari deâ primi personaggi, che erano in essa corte, gli co[n]cesse priuilegi, prouisioni, e premi grandissimi: e dâun solo ritratto, châei gli fece in Bologna, mille scudi ordinò, che gli fossero dati.â
Vasari 1568, p. 810: âDicesi, che lâanno 1530, essendo Carlo quinto Imperatore in Bologna su dal Cardinale Hippolito deâMedici, Tiziano, per mezzo di Pietro Aretino, chiamató la, doue fece un bellissimo ritratto di sua Maestà tutto armato che tanto piacque, che gli fece donare mille scudi.â
Borghini 1584, p. 528: âI Ritratti piu famosi fatti da lui son questi, di Carlo Quinto Imperadore fatto piu volte, e lâvltima volta che il ritrasse fu da lui fatto Caualiere, & assegnatili 200 scudi dâentrata lâanno sopra la Camera di Napoli, & ogni volta che fece il suo ritratto hebbe 1000 scudi di donatiuo.â
Zuccaro 1607, vol. 2, pp. 27â28: âNon meno anchora à tempi nostri sono stati sì eccellenti imitatori del vero, di alcune cose che hanno allâimprouiso ingannato molti, come frà gli altri vn ritratto di Carlo Quinto, di man di Tiziano, sì famoso Pittore.â
The likely impossibility of ever determining which painting is meant in these accounts of the meeting of Charles V and Titian at Bologna has been more thoroughly treated in Bodart 1997, p. 61; Falomir Faus 2000, p. 161; Checa Cremades 2001, pp. 24â25; and Bodart 2011, p. 45.
For an account of the 1604 Pardo fire, including citations from the above-mentioned testimonials, see the first chapter of Lapuerta Montoya 2002, which expands on Lapuerta Montoya 2000.
Falomir Faus 2001, p. 82. A useful starting point for a reconstruction of the exhibition history of this painting is the list of entries from inventories in which the painting appears from Mary of Hungary through the early nineteenth century (MartÃnez Leiva and RodrÃguez Rebollo 2015, pp. 700â701, no. 76). On the origins of the painting in the collection of Mary of Hungary, see especially Checa Cremades 2010.
Tizianello 1622, unpaginated: âma sopra tutto fù caro & amato dallâInuittissimo Carlo Quinto Imperatore: il quale imittando lâeroiche operationi dâAlessandro Magno, vuole anco nellâamar la Pittura imittarlo, & se quelli desiderò un Homero, & hebbe un Apelle, questi hebbe Titiano, il quale essendosi nel tempo di Clemente Settimo Sommo Pontefice tranferito lâanno 1533 à Bologna, doue era Sua Maestà per stabilire la pace dâItalia, nè potendo lâistesso giorno, châegli vi gionse andare à fargli riuerenza, inteso da Sua Maestà lâarriuo di lui lo fè con ogni diligenza tutto un giorno cercare per la Città , & finalmente il seguente giorno gionto alla sua presenza, fù con incredible allegrezza, & honore da lui receuuto, & fatto suo Caualliere, & Annualmente stipendiato, come dal suo nobilissimo Priuilegio autentico si può vedere, onde per farsi conoscere meriteuole di tanto honore negli occhi deâ maggior Prencipi del Mondo, anzi nello cospetto del fiore di tutto il Mondo, che sâera in Bologna ridotto, ritrasse il sudetto Carlo in arme bianche sopra un ferocissimo cauallo, & lo pose nel capo di una Sala Terrena: quì se vedeva la Maestà dellâImperatore con la solita dispostezza, in maniera al vino ritratto, & con tranta [sic] leggiadria il moto del cauallo, che altro non li mancaua, che li spiriti vitali, & se lâhuomo allâocchio voleua prestar fede, inganaua se stesso, & credeua, che questi ancora vi fossero; onde se Zeusi ingannò lâuccello, formando lâuva, & Parrasio lui medesimo col velo, Titiano ceh non fù minore di questi, ne dâaltri, che fusse mai ingannò quasi tutti i principali Baroni, & Caualliere di Carlo Quinto, che impassando per la Sala, dove era il quadro, lo riueriuano, stimandolo realmente il vino, & vero loro Imperatore. Il che accrebbe tanto la gloria di Titiano, che non è marauiglia se da ognâuno era desiderato, riuerito, & amato.â Republished in Vita dellâinsigne pittore ⦠1809, pp. 5â6. On this biography, see especially the introduction in Puppi 2009.
Ridolfi 1648, vol. 1, pp. 153â54: âinteso lâImperadore lâarriuo di Titiano, ordinò, che tantosto à lui venisse, riceuendolo con segni di molto honore, e volle, che senza dimora ponesse mano al suo ritratto, qual rappresentò con maestà leggiadra, adorno di lucide armi sparse di pretiosi fregi, sopra à baio cauallo stellate in fronte, e di ricche barbature guernito, che fastoso di sì nobil peso, con portamento superbo, sbuffando dalle nari generoso ardire, rodeua il dorato freno, stando in atto di passeggiare alteramente il suolo: e sì viuamente espresse quel glorioso Monarca, che posto il quadro nel capo dâvn porticale, a prima vista fù credito per lâImperadore, di che Cesare stupì, vedendosi in cotal guisa al viuo formato dalle mani di Titiano, godendo, che lâimagine sua fosse da ognâvno riuerita. Vna simile riuerenza, e timore accadè in Cassandro Capitano, nel mirar lâeffigie dâAlessandro dipinta dal famoso Apelle. ⦠Partito lâImperadore da Bologna, Titiano decorato dâhonori, ritornò à Venetia.â
For a complete and incisive account of the changing biography of Titianâs life and career, see Bodart 2011, pp. 35â49. For an analysis of the historical veracity of Titianâs early biographies and their sources, see Hood and Hope 1977, pp. 551â52; and Hope 1993.
Cadorin 1850, p. 17: âlâApelle di questo secoloâ; âAlessandro Magno ed Ottaviano Augusto.â On this document, see also Bodart 2011, p. 36.
That this was the first commission for this gallery is argued in Orso 1986, p. 48.
Barbeito DÃez 2015, p. 43, n. 20.
For the payment record dating to August 1625, see Barbeito DÃez 2015, p. 30. For documentation that the frame of Velázquezâs equestrian portrait matched that of Titian, see Azcárate 1960b, pp. 360â61. For a more comprehensive treatment of the production of this frame and its gilding, in addition to the production of hooks for the hang of this portrait in the New Room, see Orso 1986, pp. 48â49.
Cited in Azcárate 1960b, pp. 360â61: âun quadro grande para el retrato de su Magd. questa en el salon nuevo con su bastidor de treçe pies y tres quartos de alto y onçe y tres quartos de ancho ⦠la moldura conforme a la del emperador.â
Dal Pozzo 2004, p. 99: âsopra questi è un Titio dicesi pur di Titiano maggiore del vero per metà , segue del medesimo un gran ritratto del naturale di Carlo V armato à cavallo in atto di spigner a carriera con un bellissimo paese, e segue unâaltro Titio rispondente allâaltro di mano del Mudo spagnuolo, di rimpetto al ritratto di Carlo V nellâaltra testata della sala è un ritratto del Re dâhoggi a cavallo armato grande del vero, vâè un bel paese, e aria di mano pur di pittor spagnuolo, vien messo in mezzo da due altri Titii.â On this passage of dal Pozzoâs diary, see Dal Pozzo 2004, pp. XLVIIâLXI; and Harris 1970.
Francisco Pachecoâs biography of Velázquez includes a description of this portrait that is exceedingly abbreviated, saying simply that it is âa Portrait of his Majesty on Horseback, all of it imitated from life, even the countrysideâ (Pacheco 1649, p. 102: âel Retrato de su Magestad a Cavallo, imitado todo del natural hasta el paisâ; see also Pacheco 1990, p. 205; Pacheco 2018, p. 36: âthe portrait of His Majesty on horseback, done entirely from nature, even the landscapeâ). Antonio Palominoâs biography offers a similarly abbreviated account, albeit with descriptive details including that the king was armed and that the painting was life-size (Palomino 1724, vol. 3, p. 326; see also Palomino 1947, p. 897; Palomino 1987, p. 145; Palomino 2018, p. 68). All other surviving records of the painting are disputed. One entry in the 1686 inventory of the contents of the Casa del Tesoro (literally âTreasure Houseâ) immediately adjacent to the palace proper describes âa portrait of the king our lord Don Philip IV armed and on horseback, life-size, with a baton in his right hand, an original by the hand of Diego Velázquez pintor de cámara and aposentador de palacio, on a canvas five varas tall and three and a half wide, more or less, without a frameâ (AGP, Administración General, Legajo 38, exp. 3, fol. 71v: âun retrato de el Rey nro señor Dn Phelipe quarto siendo moço armado y a cavallo al natural con baston en la mano derecha original de mano de Diego Velazquez Pintor de Camara y Aposentor de Palaçio en un lienço de cinco varas de alto y tres y media de ancho poco mas ô menos sin marcoâ). Scholars continue debating, however, whether this inventory entry describes the equestrian portrait in question or another entirely, also presumed to be lost. That it is the 1625 portrait is argued in Justi 1889, p. 88; Cruzada Villaamil 1885, pp. 37â40; Bottineau 1956â58, pt. 5, p. 474; and MartÃnez Leiva and RodrÃguez Rebollo 2015, p. 62, n. 143. A vehement argument against this theory can be found in Morán Turina 2006a, p. 49, esp. n. 11. The inventory of Velázquezâs possessions at the time of his death also includes a portrait of âour lord the King on a brown horse, one vara high,â but there is no supporting documentation to connect this smaller-scale work to any finished canvas (Mariño 1999, p. 78: âEl Rey Nuestro señor en un cauallo castaño, de bara de altoâ). No painted copies or preparatory stages of the work are known. Miguel Falomir has suggested that the image of Philip IV on horseback that appears in Sebastián de Herrera Barnuevoâs Charles II with the Images of His Ancestors (Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid) might recall Velázquezâs original, but it is difficult to evaluate this suggestion given the uncertainty of the surviving evidence (Falomir Faus 2001, p. 83). José Luis Sancho has offered another hypothesis, proposing that the equestrian portrait that was eventually exhibited in the Buen Retiro palace is the 1625 portrait, enlarged and retouched for this site when it was decorated in the 1630s (Sancho 1991). Proper evaluation of this hypothesis would require a comprehensive study of the portrait but also of the decoration of the Buen Retiro in its entirety, a preliminary bibliography for which would include Brown and Elliott 1980, republished as Brown and Elliott 2003; Liedtke and Moffitt 1981; Moffitt 1987â88; Baticle 1999; and Ãbeda de los Cobos 2005.
Panofsky 1969, p. 84.
Scholars from across the historiography have remarked on the role that the trope of Apelles and Alexander gave to the structuring of Velázquezâs relationship to Philip IV, including Brown 1978, pp. 93â94; MarÃas 1999, p. 215; and Bodart 2011, p. 251, among others.
Pacheco 1649, p. 102; see also Pacheco 1990, p. 205; and Pacheco 2018, p. 36.
Corpus velazqueño 2000, vol. 1, pp. 51â55, docs. 38â40.
Corpus velazqueño 2000, vol. 1, pp. 51â52, doc. 38. This sonnet originally appears in Pacheco 1649, p. 110; see also Pacheco 1990, pp. 212â13; and Pacheco 2018, pp. 46â47. For the most thorough treatment of the events leading up to and immediately following Velázquezâs establishment as painter to King Philip IV, as narrated by his biographers (and especially on the role the equestrian portrait played in these events), see especially Bodart 2011, pp. 249â55.
Pacheco 1649, p. 66; see also Pacheco 1990, p. 147. On the recurrence of the trope of Alexander and Apelles in Titianâs biographies, see especially Bodart 2011, pp. 36â41.
Pacheco 1649, p. 110: âQuâel Planeta benigno a tanto Cielo, tu nombre ilustrará con nueva gloria, pues es mas que Alexandro, i tu su Apeles.â See also Pacheco 1990, p. 213; and Pacheco 2018, p. 47.
Once installed, Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg and Titianâs furias would never move. Every inventory made of the contents of this room of the royal palace between the writing of Cassiano dal Pozzoâs travel diary and the destruction of the Alcázar palace in a fire in 1734 records the presence of these paintings on the walls of the gallery on which they were installed in the early 1620s. These include the inventory of the contents of the Alcázar palace of 1636 (AGP, Administración General, Legajo 768, exp. 2, published as MartÃnez Leiva and RodrÃguez Rebollo 2007); the inventory of the contents of the Alcázar palace of 1686 (AGP, Administración General, Legajo 38, exp. 3, published in Bottineau 1956â58 and in MartÃnez Leiva and RodrÃguez Rebollo 2015); and the testament of Charles II written between 1701 and 1703 (published in Fernández Bayton 1975).
On Rubensâs Philip IV of Spain on Horseback (lost), see Vergara 1999, pp. 65â80; and Portús Pérez 2003, among others. On the state of the New Room at the time of Rubensâs visit to the court between 1628 and 1629 and the paintings that he contributed to its program, see DÃaz Padrón 2004, ch. 6.
On the sonnets, see especially Ligo 1970.
The respective bibliographies on Titian and Velázquez are enormous, but considerably fewer publications closely examine these figures in dialogue. Texts that do this include Pérez Sánchez 1976; McKim-Smith 1988; Checa Cremades 1994b; MarÃas 2003b; and Bodart 2011.