Royal Velázquez Portrait Expected to Shatter Auction Records
A portrait of a Spanish queen painted by Diego Velázquez, the 17th-century artist celebrated for his depictions of Spain’s royal family, is expected to shatter his auction record when it goes up for sale early next year.
The work depicts Isabel de Borbón, the first wife of Philip IV of Spain and daughter of Henri IV of France. With an estimate in the region of $35 million, it is set to become Velázquez’s most expensive painting when it heads to auction at Sotheby's next February. The Spanish painter’s current auction record was set in 2007 when his Saint Rufina fetched $16.9 million at Sotheby’s in London.
Towering two meters high, the portrait depicts the beloved Spanish Queen in her twenties wearing a black court dress. While it was originally painted in the 1620s, Velázquez returned to the work in the 1630s and changed aspects of both the costume and composition, a revision historians believe was influenced by his friendship with the painter Sir Peter Paul Rubens, who visited the Spanish court on a diplomatic mission. “He had already been crowned official painter to the Spanish King, but in 1628, he met, for the first time, Sir Peter Paul Rubens, whose confidence with the brush, and whose fluid style Velázquez quickly adapted, making of them something entirely his own, and—in the process—taking the art of royal portraiture to the next level,” said Christopher Apostle, Sotheby’s international head of Old Master paintings, in a statement.
Velázquez portraits are rarely seen at auctions—due to their historical significance, most remain in either royal or museum collections. “No other Velázquez paintings of this scale and importance have come to the market in more than half a century,” according to a statement from George Wachter, Sotheby’s chairman and co-worldwide head of Old Master paintings.
Diego Velázquez had a close relationship with Spanish royals
What is likely the painter’s most renowned royal portrait, a 1656 painting of several Spanish court figures known as Las Meninas, currently hangs in Madrid’s Prado Museum. The institution also holds his celebrated portrait of Philip IV, Isabel de Borbón’s counterpart and Velázquez’s greatest patron—the painter was the primary artist for the King’s court. Meanwhile, his portrayal of the couple’s daughter, the Infanta Maria Teresa of Spain, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection.
The portrait of Isabel de Borbón was displayed for years at Madrid’s Buen Retiro Palace until Napoleon’s 1808 Invasion of Spain, after which it appeared in King Louis Philippe’s Spanish gallery at the Louvre. It was later sold to Henry Huth, an English merchant banker and prominent book collector, who exhibited it at the Wykehurst Park mansion in Sussex, England. The work remained in his family until 1950, when it appeared at auction. The current owners have kept the portrait in their collection for 45 years.
This December, it will go on view in the U.K. for the first time in half a century. The portrait will subsequently be displayed in New York before it heads to auction on February 1 as part of Sotheby’s annual Master Paintings sale.