Infanta Margarita

The painting is mentioned for the first time in an inventory made after the death of Don José Álvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alba and Marquis of Villafranca, married to the 13th Duchess of Alba, Mrs. María del Pilar Teresa Cayetana de Silva Álvarez de Toledo. The document, dated 1796, reads as follows: “No. 61. other (portrait) full-length (portrait), of a girl dressed in white in the old Spanish style, original by Don Diego Velázquez, equal in size and frame to the previous one (four feet and six fingers tall, three and four wide, plaster frame)”. It can be assured that the canvas belonged to Don Gaspar de Haro y Guzmán, 5th Count-Duke of Olivares and 7th Marquis del Carpio, since this inventory cites the canvas among those that come from this collection and which have a number on the back with the letters “D”, “G” and “H”, which corresponds to Don Gaspar. These letters would be hidden when the canvas was covered. The painting is not mentioned in the known inventories of this character because the oldest (from 1651) predates the painting and the others record only the paintings that Don Gaspar had in Rome and Naples. When Casa de Alba was added to Berwick's in 1802, the canvas was one of the 32 that were considered to be linked to the title. Later, some critics diminished its artistic value, and it was even considered a workshop work. The presence of the painting in the exhibition “Portraits of Children”, held in 1925 by the Spanish Society of Friends of Art, began its revaluation. It has already been recognized that the work “is far superior to what is known about Mazo”. Mayer reproduced the canvas in his Catalogue (No. 525, plate 182), although his judgment was still hesitant. Professor Sánchez Cantón is responsible for the strict inclusion of the canvas among Velázquez's originals. When analyzing the portrait of the Infanta Margarita who presides over “Las Meninas”, he observed that among the seven portraits that the great artist made of her, the one of the Casa de Alba must have been the first; he also says that “it is probably the example made of nature, repeated more freely, widening the background and completed with a vase in the one in the Vienna Museum”.

He appeared in the exhibition of paintings at the Casa de Alba held at the Prado Museum between 1945 and 1946.