A prince of Portugal at fourteen - studio of Anthonis Mor, circa 1552

 

Dom João Manuel, Prince of Portugal (3 June 1537 – 2 January 1554), Portuguese infante, the eighth child of King João III of Portugal by his wife Catarina of Austria, herself the daughter of Philip I of Castile. João Manuel was born in the Royal Palace of Évora and became the heir to the throne of Portugal at the age of two. He had survived his four older brothers who died in early childhood, though he was a sickly child as well. Of his parents' nine children he and his elder sister Maria Manuela were the only ones to survive past the age of six years old, and all of his siblings predeceased him. It is believed that the successive inter-marriages between the houses of Spain and Portugal were probably responsible for the ill health and early deaths of the children. In January of 1552, at the age of fourteen, he married Princess Joanna of Spain, his first cousin - twice over, through both the paternal and maternal lines. João Manuel died almost exactly two years later at the age of sixteen, probably of tuberculosis, although it's possible the cause was diabetes, a disease that had afflicted his maternal grandfather. Eighteen days later his only child, a son, was born; the child would survive and go on to reign as King Sebastião I of Portugal.

This portrait is part of the Royal Collection and is a contemporary replica of the lost original, destroyed by fire at the palace of El Pardo in 1604. This is one of two known replicas, both of which would have been executed under the artist’s direct supervision in Portugal. Thought to be created in order to be used as part of the prince's marriage negotiations, the painting moved between various royal collections in Portugal and Spain until, in the 1830s, it entered that of Louis-Philippe, King of the French, who had it displayed in his "Galerie Espagnole" in the Louvre. Queen Victoria purchased it from the deposed monarch's estate in 1853.