Beloved sisters - double portrait of the infantas Isabel Clara Eugenia and Catalina Micaela of Spain, 1570

 

Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia (12 August 1566 - 1 December 1633). She married Albert VII, Archduke of Austria and lived to the age of sixty-seven.

Infanta Catalina Micaela (10 October 1567 - 6 November 1597). She married Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy, and died at the age of thirty.

Adapted - and significantly altered - from the essay on the Royal Collection website:

This nearly life-size double-portrait of the daughters of Phillip II of Spain from his third marriage, was formerly attributed to Anthonis Mor and subsequently to Sofonisba Anguissola. However, the overall composition and the modelling of the features and treatment of the hands points toward the work of Alonso Sánchez Coello. It is strikingly similar to Coello's double-portrait of the infantas in the Museo del Prado, and is very close in quality to other known works by the artist. However it lacks the fluency of his brushwork, suggesting it was at least in part painted by one of the artists working in his studio.

Typical of sixteenth-century Spanish court portraiture, the painting depicts the little girls in formal poses and with a precise attention to detail in the painting of their richly ornamented dresses and jewelry. Four-year-old Isabel Clara Eugenia is shown on the left, a green parrot perching on her hand, while her three-year-old sister, Catalina Micaela, holds gloves in her left hand and rests her right on the forepaw of a spaniel who sits on the table. Both girls are wearing dark green dresses which are richly embroidered with flowers and gold lace and trimmed with pearls. During this period it was common for royal children to be depicted almost as miniature adults and in this portrait, the 'al forza', a tuck of fabric around the hem of a skirt, which was a distinctive feature of dress for adult woman in Spain, is clearly shown.

Coello's later portrait of the infantas in the collection of the Museo del Prado, circa 1575.

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Alonso Sánchez Coello (circa 1531, Benifairó de les Valls - 8 August 1588, Madrid), Spanish Renaissance painter. He was a student of Anthonis Mor and his successor at the Spanish court. He is mainly known for his portraits executed in a style which combines the objectivity of the Flemish tradition with the sensuality of Venetian painting. He was court painter to Philip II.

A king's priorities - portraits of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor

Alonso Sánchez Coello, 1567. Archduke Rudolf was then fifteen years old.

Martino Rota, circa 1570s.

Martino Rota, 1580.

Circle of Frans Pourbus the Youger, circa 1580s.

 Joseph Heintz the Elder, 1594.

Studio of Hans von Aachen, circa 1590s.

Circle of Hans von Aachen, circa 1590s.

Hans von Aachen, circa 1590s.

Wax relief by Wenzel Maler, 1606.

As Vertumnus, by Guiseppe Arcimboldo, 1591. The Emperor was delighted with this whimsical portrait.

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Rudolf II (18 July 1552, Vienna – 20 January 1612, Prague) was Holy Roman Emperor (1576–1612), King of Hungary and Croatia (as Rudolf I, 1572–1608), King of Bohemia (1575–1608/1611) and Archduke of Austria (1576–1608). A member of the House of Habsburg, he was withdrawn, depressive, intellectual, bisexual, distracted. The opening paragraph in his Wikipedia entry gets his place in history just about right:

Rudolf's legacy has traditionally been viewed in three ways: an ineffectual ruler whose mistakes led directly to the Thirty Years' War; a great and influential patron of Northern Mannerist art; and an intellectual devotee of occult arts and learning which helped seed what would be called the scientific revolution.

The rest of the entry here.

Sumptuously uncomfortable children

Anne of Austria, Queen of France, as a child, by Juan Pantoja de la Cruz (1553–1608).

Infante Alfonso "el Caro" and Infanta Ana Margarita, by Bartolomé González y Serrano (1564–1627), 1613.

Archduke Wenceslaus of Austria (1561-1578), by Alonso Sánchez Coello (circa1531-1588), circa 1570s.

Infanta Ana Mauricia of Austria, by Juan Pantoja de la Cruz (1553–1608), 1602.

Infante Don Felipe, by Alonso Sánchez Coello (circa 1531-1588), 1580.

Poor little things....