Los Inventarios de Doña Juana de Austria, Princesa de Portugal (1535–1573)

Abstract

The publication a few years ago of a compendium of inventories for leading members of the Habsburg dynasty in the sixteenth century gave an extraordinary insight into the tastes and collecting practices of what was, at this time, the world’s most powerful family (see this Journal, 23 (2011), pp. 193–195). One surprising fact that emerged from the inventories was that the most imaginative and interesting collectors among the Habsburgs turned out not to be the men – certainly not the Emperor Charles V, too preoccupied with his struggles to hold together his vast and unwieldy empire. Instead it was the women, figures such as Charles’s aunt Margaret of Austria (1480–1530) and his sisters Mary of Hungary, Regent of the Netherlands (1505–1558) and Catherine of Austria, Queen of Portugal (1507–1578), who emerge as real individuals with clearly defined collecting tastes. In this new book, Almudena Pérez de Tudela publishes two inventories for another younger female member of the Spanish branch of the Habsburgs, Charles V and Isabella of Portugal’s youngest daughter Joanna of Austria, Princess of Portugal (1535–1573). Joanna, who had a peripatetic childhood, was at an early age noted for her learning and her accomplishment as a musician. In 1552, at the age of seventeen, she married her cousin John Manuel, Prince of Portugal, and moved to Lisbon. However, after John Manuel’s untimely death just two years later, Joanna returned to Spain where she spent the remainder of her life. After her return, she would never again see her son the future king Sebastian I of Portugal, although they remained in close contact. When Joanna’s brother Philip departed for England in 1554 to marry Mary Tudor, Joanna was appointed regent, carrying out her duties efficiently and with considerable skill. Today, she is best remembered for her founding in 1554 of the Convent of Las Descalzas Reales in Madrid, housed in the palace in which she was born, and the repository for some of the works of art from her collection (some remaining in the convent to this day). Her funerary monument by Pompeo Leoni in the convent, depicting the princess in prayer, exemplifies the strong piety that would guide her in her later decades.