Portrait of Margaret of Austria (1584-1611), Queen of Spain

…; from Charles Howard Hodges (1764-1837), Amsterdam, with SK-A-507, 509, 510, fl. 28, to the museum, 1829¹¹NHA, ARS, Kop, inv. 36, pp. 253-255 (28 April 1829); NHA, ARS, Kop, inv. 36, p. 258 (8 July 1829).

ObjectNumber: SK-A-508

The sitter, Margaret of Austria (1584-1611), was the daughter of Charles II (1540-1590), Archduke of Austria-Styria, and younger sister of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II (1578-1637). Her marriage by proxy to King Philip III (1578-1621) of Spain in 1598, when she was fourteen and a half, was performed at Ferrara by Pope Clement VII and took place in a joint celebration with that of Albert (1559-1621), Archduke of Austria, and Isabella Clara Eugenia (1566-1633), the Infanta of Spain (see nos. SK-A-509 and SK-A-510), in Valencia in 1599. The marriage was happy and fecund; she had eight children among them the future King Philip IV. The Queen exerted influence on her husband’s direction of affairs; she was partly responsible for his support of the Emperor, which can be seen as a factor in Spain’s decline during the long reign of her son.²²M.S. Sánchez, The Empress, the Queen and the Nun: Women and Power at the Court of Philip III of Spain, Baltimore/London 1998, pp. 178-79; for the influence wielded by the queen, the dowager empress Maria (1528-1603) and Margaret of the Cross (1567-1608).

This portrait, correctly identified as of Margaret of Austria in the 1880 museum catalogue, is to be questioned as a likeness in so far as it lacks the prognathous characteristic notoriously peculiar to the Habsburgs. Whether there is an explanation of this other than the incompetence of the artist is unclear. It is already evident in what Kusche claims to be replicas of the earliest portrayal of the sitter in Spain, the painting by Philip’s court painter Juan Pantoja de la Cruz (1554-1608) of 1601.³³M. Kusche, Juan Pantoja de la Cruz y sus seguidores: B. Gonzáles, R. de Villandrando y A. López Polanco, Madrid 2007, pp. 111-12, figs. 56, 57, for the replicas at Innsbruck and the Alte Pinakothek, Munich (H. Soehner, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen alte Pinakothek, München, Spanische Meister, 2 vols., Munich 1963, I, pp. 151-55, no. 6917, also for a discussion of the dating).

However, her jaw is unremarkable in the early likeness engraved by Antonius Wierix II (1555/1559-1604)⁴⁴F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700, Amsterdam/Roosendaal 1948-, LXVIII, part X, 2004, no. 3137. as a pendant to the engraved portrait of her husband, in the first state of which he is described as prince, which dates it to before his father’s death in 1598.⁵⁵F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700, Amsterdam/Roosendaal 1948-, LXVIII, part X, 2004, no. 2138. The prototype of the former print is not known; possibly it was a miniature sent to Philip before Margaret’s arrival in Spain, perhaps at second hand.⁶⁶M. Kusche, Juan Pantoja de la Cruz y sus seguidores: B. Gonzáles, R. de Villandrando y A. López Polanco, Madrid 2007, p. 102. The print may in turn have influenced the rendering of the face in the present picture, a suggestion that would carry greater weight if the face of Philip in the printed pendant was like the face in the painted pendant, also in the Rijksmuseum (SK-A-507. But that is not the case.

The museum portrait of Philip in all probability derives, if not at first hand, from that by Pantoja de la Cruz in the Palazzo Reale, Madrid.⁷⁷Soler del Campo noted the connection in A. Soler del Campo (ed.), The Art of Power: Royal Armor and Portraits from Imperial Spain, translated by J.F. Ordman, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Madrid (Museo Nacional del Prado) 2009-10, p. 187; for the portrait see M. Kusche, Juan Pantoja de la Cruz y sus seguidores: B. Gonzáles, R. de Villandrando y A. López Polanco, Madrid 2007, p. 113 and fig. 63. The attribution of the latter is due to Kusche who rejected Sánchez Cantón’s earlier description of it as a poor copy possibly after Rubens.⁸⁸F.J. Sánchez Cantón, Los Retratos de los Reyes de España, Barcelona 1948, p. 136 and fig. 116. The dating of circa 1603 by both authors seems too late, irrespective of an incipient beard and moustache in themselves perhaps rather sparse for a young man in his mid-twenties. Indeed, the sitter may be even younger than in the first extant portrayal – according to Kusche – of him as king of circa 1601.⁹⁹M. Kusche, Juan Pantoja de la Cruz y sus seguidores: B. Gonzáles, R. de Villandrando y A. López Polanco, Madrid 2007, pp. 102-03 and fig. 53; for a review of the dating see H. Soehner, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen alte Pinakothek, München, Spanische Meister, 2 vols., coll. cat. Munich 1963, I, pp. 149-50 under no. 6916. He was shown there in armour that he had originally worn as a youth (see SK-A-507); but Soler del Campo has observed the anachronistic use of suits of armour at this period.¹⁰¹⁰Soler del Campo in A. Soler del Campo (ed.), The Art of Power: Royal Armor and Portraits from Imperial Spain, translated by J.F. Ordman, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Madrid (Museo Nacional del Prado) 2009-10, pp. 187-88.

That the Palazzo Reale portrait originally had a pendant depicting Margaret of Austria is established by a copy which was offered with such a rendering on the London market in 1997 (when described as from the studio of Frans Pourbus II (1569-1622)).¹¹¹¹Oil on canvas, 74.5 x 58.5 cm; anonymous sale, London (Phillips), 2 December 1997, no. 101(B); previously collection Mrs P. Starkey, Radway, Warwickshire; her sale, on the premises (Phillips with Savills), 16 July 1975, no. 337. The prototype of this portrait of Margaret is most likely also the indirect source of the Rijksmuseum portrait. And so just as the present portrait of Philip is a generalized, softened and sweetened derivation of the Palazzo Reale portrait, so to a lesser extent is the Rijksmuseum portrait of Margaret of the likeness in the presumed copy. The queen’s elaborate, pearl and jewel encrusted costume is the same. In the Rijksmuseum portrait, the plumes of the headdress can be described as red and white – the colours of the duchy of Burgundy and of Austria.

The handling of the costume and armour in the Rijksmuseum portraits differs from that of the faces, and while the former could be thought to be the work of a competent journeyman hand active in the early seventeenth century, it might be questioned whether the rendering and appearance of the faces are typical of that time. But as matters stand, there is no indication that the faces have been repainted; and there is no firm evidence to throw doubt on the museum’s dating of the pair to circa 1600.

The museum has long considered the two paintings to have been executed by a Flemish (in 1976 ‘south Netherlandish’) hand. Zandvliet ascribed the present portrait of Philip to the studio of Frans Pourbus II;¹²¹²K. Zandvliet et al., Maurits, Prins van Oranje, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2000-01, no. 96. but this can be ruled out as that artist was never in Spain. As proposed above, the ultimate prototypes must have been by Pantoja de la Cruz; his portraits of the royal pair were despatched to various European courts including that of Brussels.¹³¹³M. Kusche, Juan Pantoja de la Cruz y sus seguidores: B. Gonzáles, R. de Villandrando y A. López Polanco, Madrid 2007, p. 101. Although such portraits are not listed in the many inventories of Antwerp seventeenth-century estates which have been published, a demand for them would have existed in circles wider than the court – witness the Wierix prints – and prototypes for their production would – it is assumed – have been available in the Archducal collection in Brussels, if not through mercantile channels. Further, while use of copper as a support seems to have been rare in the seventeenth century in Spain,¹⁴¹⁴C. Bargellini, ‘Painting on Copper in Spanish America’, in M.K. Komanecky et al., Copper as Canvas: Two Centuries of Masterpiece Paintings on Copper, 1575-1775, Phoenix (Art Museum)/Kansas City (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art)/The Hague (Mauritshuis) 1998-99, pp. 31-44, esp. p. 35, and p. 43, under no. 23. it was common in Flanders or certainly in Antwerp. These somewhat tenuous factors seem the main reasons for believing the origin of the museum portraits to be southern Netherlandish. It could be that the two portraits are the product of a Brussels workshop with connections to the Archducal court. It may be that his workshop specialized in the production of such copies of these sitters and of their relatives, the sovereigns on the Netherlands, see SK-A-509 and SK-A-510, with labour divided between the execution of the faces and costumes. Apart from the Rijksmuseum pendants of Philip and Margaret, there can be cited the pair in the Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp,¹⁵¹⁵Oil on panel, 67 x 51 cm, reproduced in K. van Cauteren, Politics as Painting: Hendrik de Clerck (1560-1630) and the Archducal Entreprise of Empire, Tielt 2016, pp. 14-15. and that already referred to on the London market in 1997.

Gregory Martin, 2022

1832, p. 88, no. 412 (as unknown of an unknown Spanish princess); 1872, p. 195, no. 413 (as unknown sixteenth century of Elisabeth de Bourbon); 1880, p. 432, no. 514 (as unknown Flemish of Margaret of Austria); 1887, p. 180, no. 354 (as Flemish School, c. 1600 of Anne of Austria); 1903, p. 31, no. 354 (as Flemish School, c. 1600 of Margaret of Austria); 1918, p. 31, no. 354; 1934, p. 27, no. 354 (as anonymous Flemish School beginning of the 17th century); 1976, p. 691, no. A 508 (as Southern Netherlands School, c. 1600)

G. Martin, 2022, 'anonymous, Portrait of Margaret of Austria (1584-1611), Queen of Spain, Southern Netherlands, c. 1600', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6634