Godfried Schalcken (Made, near Brade 1643-1706 The Hague)

Portrait of Maria Anna of Pfalz-Neuburg (1667-1740), Consort of Carlos II of Spain, half-length, in a red embroidered dress

Details

Godfried Schalcken (Made, near Brade 1643-1706 The Hague)
Portrait of Maria Anna of Pfalz-Neuburg (1667-1740), Consort of Carlos II of Spain, half-length, in a red embroidered dress
signed and dated 'G^.Schalcken. 1690.' (lower left)
oil on canvas
19¾ x 15¾ in. (50.2 x 40 cm.)

Provenance

Aart Schouman; his sale, Doorschodt, The Hague, 17 October 1792, lot 78 (10 florins to Klijné).
L.H. de Haze Bomme; his sale, Willem la Cable, Middelburg, 15 December 1803, lot 16.
Madame Pierre van Loo; her sale, J. & A. Le Roy, frères, Ghent, 26-28 February 1912, lot 264.
Private collection, France.

Literature

C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century, V, Cambridge, 1976, pp. 398 and 416, nos. 314 and 379.
T. Beherman, Godfried Schalcken, Paris, 1988, appendix I, 'Tableaux mentionnés par Hofstede de Groot mais non retrouvés par l'auteur', pp. 407 and 412, nos. 314 and 379.
L. Ribot, Carlos II, El rey y su entorno cortesano, Madrid, 2009, p. 129.
A. de Vries, S. Craft-Giepmans, Portret in portret in de Nederlandse kunst 1550-2012, Bussum, 2012, p. 307, no. 36.

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Lot Essay

The daughter of Philip Willhelm, Elector and Count Palatine of Neuburg, the sitter grew up in Bavaria. In 1690 she was married to Carlos II of Spain, whose first wife had died childless the previous year: this portrait may have been commissioned to commemorate this occasion. Their marriage was not a happy one; Carlos was noted for his physical, intellectual, and emotional disabilities, along with his consequent ineffectual rule. Maria Anna also failed to produce an heir, in all probability because of the king's health problems, which ultimately resulted in the War of the Spanish Succession upon his death in 1700. Maria Anna had a reputation for being arrogant, vain and selfish, and was not much loved by the Spanish court. She was eventually forced to leave for Bayonne and was only permitted back to Spain two years before her death in 1740.

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