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| Diego Velázquez Philip IV c. 1623-28 Prado |
The greatest Spanish art-collecting king was Philip IV (1605-1665) who ruled for more than forty years in the middle of the 17th century. Yesterday we watched him buying fifteen of the best pictures now to be found in the Prado from the English murderers of his fellow-king, Charles I.
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| Diego Velázquez Philip IV c. 1626-28 Prado |
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| Gaspar de Crayer Philip IV in Parade Armor 1628 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Peter Paul Rubens Philip IV c. 1628-29 Hermitage |
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| Gaspar de Crayer Philip IV on Horseback c. 1628-32 Prado |
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| Diego Velázquez Philip IV c. 1631-32 National Gallery, London |
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| Diego Velázquez Philip IV in Hunting Dress 1633 Prado |
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| Diego Velázquez Philip IV on Horseback 1634-35 Prado |
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| Diego Velázquez Philip IV on Horseback c. 1635 Pitti Palace |
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| Diego Velázquez Philip IV 1644 Frick Collection |
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| Diego Velázquez Philip IV 1653 Prado |
Philip's reign coincided with the career of Spain's greatest painter, Diego Velázquez (1599-1660). By the 1650s when both painter and monarch were showing their ages, Philip had begun to avoid posing for further portraits. One of the last images Velázquez made of him is the indistinct reflection (side by side with the Queen's) in the mirror on the back wall within the well-known painting below. In its day, this was a portrait of the couple's only living child and heir, the five-year-old Infanta Margarita. A few years later a little brother was born, but by then Velázquez was dead. When Philip IV himself died in 1665 the little boy became King of Spain at age three. His older sister, the Infanta Margarita, traveled to Austria at age 15 and married her uncle, the Holy Roman Emperor. She died in childbirth at age 21.
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| Diego Velázquez Las Meninas c. 1656 Prado |