Mariana: Velázquez’s Portrait of a Queen at the Norton Simon Museum

Accompany Catherine Hess on a tour of a special display at the Norton Simon: Mariana: Velázquez’s Portrait of a Queen from the Museo Nacional del Prado. Diego Velazquez (1599–1660) was a Spanish Baroque painter and the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. Because of his masterful style of dramatic illumination and bold brushwork, Velázquez is sometimes referred to as "a painter's painter." In Queen Mariana of Austria, he depicts the teenage monarch in magnificent splendor. It was Velázquez’s first major composition after returning to Madrid from several years in Rome, and it represents a distinctive and final chapter of the artist’s storied career.

Exhibited on the West Coast for the first time, Velázquez’s sumptuous and monumental image is installed alongside the work of an international group of artists whose art was collected by the Habsburg court. This is a rare opportunity for us, as there are no other paintings by Velázquez in Californian public collections

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