Infanta Margarita in a Blue Dress: A Masterwork by Velázquez from Vienna
Meadows Museum
Jul. 25, 2023 - Nov. 1, 2015
The Meadows Museum hosts the Kunsthistorisches’ Portrait of the Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Blue Dress (1659) by Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (1599-1660). One of the artist’s final portraits and executed one year before his death, this work depicts the Infanta Margarita, daughter of Philip IV and Mariana of Austria, who is also prominently featured in Velázquez’s masterpiece Las Meninas (1656), painted just three years earlier. As the royal couple’s first child, the Infanta was promised to her uncle and cousin, Emperor Leopold I, whom she married in Vienna, testifying to the intimate dynastic connection between the Spanish and Austrian branches of the Habsburg Empire.