VELASQUEZ (1599-1660) PORTRAIT OF PHILIP IV OF SPAIN (Known as the "Parma Velasquez") Canvas, 38 3/4 inches by 52 1/2 inches

PHILIP IV. was born in 1605, and inherited the throne of Spain when he was only 16 years old. His reign was marked by no noteworthy achievement, and his only claim to the gratitude of posterity is his patronage of Velasquez, Lope de Vega and Calderon. He has, indeed, been held responsible for the decay of Spanish political and military power. He assumed a rigid solemnity of manner in public and was seen to laugh only three times in the course of his life. In private, however, he indulged in coarse horseplay and was grossly immoral. He died in 1665.

This famous portrait was painted in 1644, in Cataluna, where Philip had gone to try to raise the siege of Lerida, invested by the French. Velasquez accompanied him, and in contemporary records it is related how the King dressed as a soldier, with "fitted hose edged with silver embroidery, sleeves of same, plain buck-jerkin, red sash edged with silver, cape of red fustian, braiding of silver embroidery, short sword and spurs of silver, falling collar, and black sombrero with crimson plumes," posed to Velasquez in a dilapidated shanty, that had to be fitted with doors and windows to make it fit for the King to stay in. The finished canvas was then "Hung in the church under a canopy embroidered in gold, where much people congregated to see it." The record adds that "copies thereof are already being made" —of which probably the fine one in Dulwich, England, is an example.

Its subsequent history is known. It was sent by Ferdinand VI., King of Spain, to the palace of his step-brother, the Grand Duke of Parma, in whose family it remained until recent times. It was sold by Prince Elias, son of Duke Robert, to Messrs. Agnew, of London.

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