Philip Prospero, Prince of Asturias
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Philip IV of Spain
Philip IV was King of Spain between 1621 and 1665, sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands, and King of Portugal until 1640...
and Mariana of Austria
Mariana of Austria
Mariana of Austria was Queen consort of Spain as the second wife of King Philip IV, who was also her maternal uncle...
to survive infancy. Spain had had no heir since the death of Prince Balthasar Carlos, the son of Philip and his first queen, Isabella, eleven years before, and the question of a successor to Philip, as Spain's strength continued to ebb, had become a matter of fervent and anxious prayer. The birth of an Infante was welcomed with much rejoicing and relief.
His birth affected the course of European history. By 1659 the prime ministers of France and Spain had been negotiating an end to their countries' hostilities for two years; now that Spain had a male heir, she could agree to consolidate the peace by marrying the king's eldest child Maria Theresa
Maria Theresa of Spain
Maria Theresa of Austria was the daughter of Philip IV, King of Spain and Elizabeth of France. Maria Theresa was Queen of France as wife of King Louis XIV and mother of the Grand Dauphin, an ancestor of the last four Bourbon kings of France.-Early life:Born as Infanta María Teresa of Spain at the...
to the French king Louis XIV. The outcome of the negotiations was the Treaty of the Pyrenees
Treaty of the Pyrenees
The Treaty of the Pyrenees was signed to end the 1635 to 1659 war between France and Spain, a war that was initially a part of the wider Thirty Years' War. It was signed on Pheasant Island, a river island on the border between the two countries...
, which established France as the world's new dominant power.
Philip Prospero lived for nearly four years. It is not known what caused his death, though "he was almost always ill, and had frequent attacks of epilepsy."
His mother, Mariana of Austria, was to have been the wife of her cousin Balthasar Charles, but after his death she was married to his father, Philip, her uncle. Of their five children two died in infancy; the last, Charles II
Charles II of Spain
Charles II was the last Habsburg King of Spain and the ruler of large parts of Italy, the Spanish territories in the Southern Low Countries, and Spain's overseas Empire, stretching from the Americas to the Spanish East Indies...
, was born eight days after Philip Prospero died, and on his father's death became the King of Spain. Charles manifested every physical misfortune symptomatic of generations of inbreeding, and his own death ended the Spanish Habsburg
Habsburg Spain
Habsburg Spain refers to the history of Spain over the 16th and 17th centuries , when Spain was ruled by the major branch of the Habsburg dynasty...
dynasty.
The year before Philip Prospero was born, Velázquez
Diego Velázquez
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period, important as a portrait artist...
painted Las Meninas
Las Meninas
Las Meninas is a 1656 painting by Diego Velázquez, the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age, in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. The work's complex and enigmatic composition raises questions about reality and illusion, and creates an uncertain relationship between the viewer and the figures...
, known in Spain as La Familia de Felipe IV. In this painting his sister Margaret Theresa, five years old, is the shining central figure. The shapes of his mother and father are reflected in a dim mirror on the back wall of the studio.
A large fresco decorating the west wall of the cloister staircase in the Convent of Las Descalzas Reales in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
depicts the royal family as it was in 1660 or 1661, when the prince was about three, eyeing their viewers from a trompe l'oeil
Trompe l'oeil
Trompe-l'œil, which can also be spelled without the hyphen in English as trompe l'oeil, is an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects appear in three dimensions.-History in painting:Although the phrase has its origin in...
balcony. The painting is attributed to Antonio de Pereda
Antonio de Pereda
Antonio de Pereda was a Spanish Baroque-era painter, best known for his still lifes. Pereda was born in Valladolid. He was the eldest of three brothers from an artistic family. His father, mother and two brothers were all painters. He was educated in Madrid by Pedro de las Cuevas and was taken...
.
Portrait
The only portrait of Philip Prospero to come down to us was painted by Velazquez in either 1659, the year Philip felt he could safely agree to the terms of the treaty with FranceTreaty of the Pyrenees
The Treaty of the Pyrenees was signed to end the 1635 to 1659 war between France and Spain, a war that was initially a part of the wider Thirty Years' War. It was signed on Pheasant Island, a river island on the border between the two countries...
, or 1660. This portrait and one of Margaret Theresa were made that year for the Emperor Leopold I
Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor
| style="float:right;" | Leopold I was a Holy Roman Emperor, King of Hungary and King of Bohemia. A member of the Habsburg family, he was the second son of Emperor Ferdinand III and his first wife, Maria Anna of Spain. His maternal grandparents were Philip III of Spain and Margaret of Austria...
, their mother's brother affianced to Margaret Theresa. In the painting the prince appears to be three or nearly three. He stands before a rich black background, the blackness of which is repeated in his eyes. His wrist limply rests over the back of a child-size chair in which lies an equally limp, contented spaniel. (These are a traditional pose and prop, though Velazquez painted his sister and, years before, his half-brother Balthasar Charles with their commanding little hands placed flat and firm, not dangling.) In Velazquez's honest depiction the baby's eyes have a faint gray-blue-brown hollowness around them. His luminous face and hands and his white muslin smock are accented by the warm red of his gown and are a brightness against the subdued, somber background colors. But the painting directly admits the little boy's precarious health: from strings criss-crossing his chest and waist hang metal bells and at least two protective lucky amulets, a cornicello
Cornicello
Cornicello, Italian for "little horn", is an amulet worn to protect against the evil eye. In the Southern Italian Dialects, it is called cuornuciello or variants thereof.-Origins and styles:...
and on the string across his left shoulder a black object, likely a fig-hand
Amulet
An amulet, similar to a talisman , is any object intended to bring good luck or protection to its owner.Potential amulets include gems, especially engraved gems, statues, coins, drawings, pendants, rings, plants and animals; even words said in certain occasions—for example: vade retro satana—, to...
carved of jet. By contrast nearly thirty years earlier Velazquez painted a robust Balthasar Charles at age two or three with staff, sword, exuberant sash and plumed hat. This is not a political picture, other than that it shows that the impossible hopes of a nation are depending on a wavering little spirit, which itself is depending on luck and fate.