Children Portrait in Golden Age Spanish Painting: Iconographic Types, the Artistic Image Specificity, Development Stages

Abstract

The article is devoted to children court portraits in the Spanish Art Golden Age. The Spanish children portrait has been unfairly overlooked by researchers. Meanwhile, its development visibly and vividly reveals the specifics of the Spanish art evolution. It also has a number of specific features that are absent in an adult portrait. The study of Philip II letters to his daughters reveals the closeness and warmth of relations in the Spanish royal family, and also shows the richness and diversity of the infantas activities. The images of fine art and the world of Philip letters to his daughters are “not congruent”, what clearly demonstrates the conventionality and canonicity of children representative images. The canon of representation helps to understand the modern didactic works of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Luis Vives, Baldassare Castiglione. Children, and especially royal children, were trained from an early age for their adult roles. Accordingly, there was a rigid canon of representation. It turns out to be the strictest in the era of Philip II. It was then that the first children portraits of infantes appeared. Subsequently, the iconography of children portraits is diversified. Italian Sofonisba Anguissola brought a sense of transience and emotionality to the strict Spanish canon, what would be adopted by Diego Velazquez. In the XVII century second half, the feeling of the variability of life was replaced by baroque bravura, enriched with allegorical figures and royal attributes in the portrait of Carlos II child by Sebastián de Herrera Barnuevo. And in the 18th century first half under the Bourbons the strict Spanish iconography was complemented by bright rocaille colors and glorification in encrypted emblems.