By SIR PETER LELY.
Full Length.
(In the Robes of the Garter.)
Mariana, Queen Regent of Spain:
By SEBASTIAN HERRERA.
Full Length.
(Seated. In a Religious Habit, the Widow’s Weeds worn in Spain.)
Born, 1631. Died, 1696.—The eldest daughter of Ferdinand III., Emperor of Germany, by the daughter of Philip III., King of Spain. Married Philip IV., in 1649. On her arrival in Spain, as a youthful bride, Mariana’s deportment had to undergo severe discipline, from the strict etiquette of the court, and the stern dignity of her royal husband, whom she shocked by the exuberance of her animal spirits, and above all, her immoderate laughter at the sallies of the Court Fool. When admonished on one occasion, she excused herself by saying it was out of her power to restrain her merriment, and that the Jester must be removed, or she must laugh on. Mariana was remarkable for the extravagance and tawdriness of her dress, as may be seen in the portraits by Velasquez. Her chief beauty consisted in her magnificent hair, which she disfigured by dressing it, in an outrageous manner, with feathers, flowers, and love knots. At a period when rouge was much worn, the immoderate use of it, made her “brick-dust cheeks” a ridiculous object, and altogether, says Stirling: “She is far more interesting wearing the widow’s weeds, in which she sate to Carreno, and Herrera, than in the butterfly garb in which she flaunts on the canvas of Velasquez.” She was as inferior to her predecessor, Isabelle de Bourbon, Philip’s first wife, in qualities of mind, as in graces of person. She became a widow; and Regent of the Kingdom, on the accession of her son Charles II., in 1665.