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| Jusepe Leonardo Relief of Breisach 1634-35 Prado |
During the middle 1630s the Spanish Crown commissioned a series of very large paintings illustrating military victories from the reign of Philip IV. These were hung in the new-built Hall of Realms at Buen Retiro Palace on the outskirts of Madrid, along with the Zurbarán Labors of Hercules seen yesterday.
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| Antonio de Pereda Relief of Genoa 1634-35 Prado |
Jonathan Brown and J.H. Elliott explore the multiple meanings of the Hall of Realms project in their 1980 book from Yale University Press, A Palace for a King : The Buen Retiro and the Court of Philip IV. "The battle paintings had obviously been carefully planned. The choice of battles, the depiction of the commanders and their subordinates, the relation of the paintings to the overall decorative scheme – all bore witness to a general design. The same careful planning was carried over into the internal organization of the paintings ... in which the generals appeared in the foreground either conducting operations or at the moment of victory, while the battles or sieges were shown in the middle ground, with distant view to the horizon. This type of composition followed the time-honored method of depicting clashes of arms, evolved during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries."
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| Diego Velázquez Surrender of Breda 1635 Prado |
Diego Velázquez painted only one of the Hall of Realms scenes, but it soon became one of his most famous pictures. Among the many Spanish court painters, he stood out (then, as now) for freshness of conception and technique in spite of imposed constraints. The Surrender of Breda (above) long ago walked away from its ostensible purpose as political propaganda.
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| Jusepe Leonardo Surrender of Jülich 1634-35 Prado |
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| Juan Bautista Maíno Recapture of Bahia 1634-35 Prado |
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| Francisco de Zurbarán Defense of Cadiz 1634 Prado |
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| Félix Castelo Recapture of St. Christopher 1634 Prado |
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| Eugenio Cajés Recapture of Puerto Rico 1634-35 Prado |
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| Vicente Carducho Siege of Rheinfelden 1634 Prado |
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| Vicente Carducho Relief of Constance 1634 Prado |
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| Vicente Carducho Battle of Fleurus 1634 Prado |
The eleven paintings above were those that featured in the Hall of Realms. An additional military victory occurred more or less at the last minute, and it fortuitously occurred in the presence of the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand, brother of Philip IV. Peter Paul Rubens was quickly commissioned to paint The Cardinal-Infante at Nördlingen (below). This vertical painting, departing somewhat from the otherwise standardized format, was hung in an anteroom to the Hall of Realms. Brown and Elliott emphasize that just as Zurbarán's Hercules was intended to be read as a figure for the King, so his generals (and relatives) in the field were to be looked at as interchangeable place-holders for the monarch himself, subduing discord and delivering stability. In fact, many of these "victories" were attached to small-scale revolts and colonial struggles. The Hall of Realms even celebrated "victories" that had already been cancelled out by "defeats" before the pictures were hung.
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| Peter Paul Rubens Cardinal-Infante at Nördlingen 1634-35 Prado |