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 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.

Maria of Austria, by Anthonis Mor

Maria of Austria, Holy Roman Empress (21 June 1528, Madrid – 26 February 1603, Madrid), Queen Consort of Germany, Bohemia and Hungary, spouse of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor. She was the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and his wife, Isabella of Portugal. In 1648, Maria married her first cousin Maximilian and bore him sixteen children, ten of whom survived infancy. Extremely pious, she wielded much political influence and twice served as regent of Spain, first for her father and, later, her brother King Philip II. In 1582, after the death of her husband, she returned to Spain and installed herself in the Convent of Las Descalzas Reales, where she lived until her death at the age of seventy-four.

(The Habsburg dynasty, the various royal titles it held, and its succession are exceedingly complicated. I'm not even going to try and explain it further; much of the above is confusing enough.)

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Anthonis Mor (circa 1516-20, Utrecht - circa 1576, probably Antwerp), Netherlandish portrait painter, very popular in the European royal courts of his day, especially those ruled by the Habsburg dynasty. Known variously as Antonis, Antoon, or Anthonius Mor, and as Anthonis Mor van Dashorst, Antonio Moro, Anthony More, etc., his signed most of his work as Anthonis Mor. Copies were regularly made of his portraits, and other artists worked to copy his style, including his student Alonso Sánchez Coello, so attribution of his work can sometimes be a challenge.