The Infante Don Baltasar Carlos Alonso Cano

Infante Don Baltasar Carlos – the sole son born to Philip IV from his first marriage – was seen as the last hope of the declining Spanish Habsburg dynasty. One of the few known portraits of the Infante, this work was painted by Alonso Cano, a friend and workshop associate of Velázquez. The regal dignity of the heir to the throne is shown by his elegant attire and his determined posture. He is holding a rifle, in allusion to one of his greatest passions, hunting. The Infante was blessed with all the gifts needed to be a worthy successor to his father, but died unexpectedly at the age of seventeen. Philip IV, by then a widower, was forced to remarry in order to produce a new heir to the throne. His second wife, his niece, Marie Anne of Austria, had originally been intended to marry Baltasar Carlos, and was only fourteen years old at the time of the wedding. She gave birth to the last member of the dynasty, the future King Charles II, who suffered from severe physical and mental disabilities.