Equestrian Portrait of Philip III

Mounted, and made for a wall

An equestrian portrait at this scale is not a picture you stand close to. It is architecture with a frame: the sitter sits above eye level, the animal supplies the mass that makes the elevation credible, and the arrangement is designed to be read from the far end of a room. The title names Philip III. Nothing in the record attaches the work to a battle, a hunt or a journey, which leaves the horse doing the one job the state format asks of it.

What the record holds

The location is the Museo del Prado in Madrid and the date of creation is 1635. The dimensions are 305 x 320 cm. Baroque is the recorded style, Spanish the recorded nationality, and the work is filed under portraiture, male portraiture, Animal Art > Horse and a cultural heritage heading. The measured colour family of the image is blue, which is uncommon here: 35 of the 636 works in this catalogue carry it.

What is absent

No commission, no sitting, no delivery and no later history are recorded. Pictures of this rank usually attract that kind of literature. None of it is in this record, and none of it is borrowed into this page.