Portrait of a Child

Portraiture of important administrative figures such as viceroys, military leaders, religious persons and aristocrats flourished throughout the Spanish colonies from their founding. Indeed, an early series of viceregal portraits in cities such as Mexico and Lima provided constant visual reminder of the authority of those portrayed, and their service to the Spanish crown.1 Portraits executed during the Hapsburg reign from the early sixteenth century to 1700, tended to depict sitters in an austere fashion. Generally, figures were either painted full, or in three-quarter view against a background of a draped red cloth of honor while the sitter’s gaze confronted the viewer. Although the artists attempted realistic physical likeness of their patrons, social status rather than actual representation of any individuality was emphasized. These portraits, nevertheless, provided the various sitters’s extensive curriculum vitae by way of an inscription which often included a coat of arms denoting their noble lineage and place in society, perhaps a mention of marriage status and connection to the king. However, with the Bourbon in power by the beginning of the eighteenth century, the tastes of the Spanish court changed radically. Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV of France ascended the Spanish throne in 1700 as Philip V and French aesthetic infused the arts and culture of this new era at home and throughout its far-flung empire.
This charming portrait of a child, most probably a small boy not yet six years of age, is rendered with grace and refined elegance clearly noted in the young sitter’s ease of pose. The European tradition of keeping small boys in girl’s attire was prevalent throughout the continent as well as in the Spanish and North American colonies. Numerous portraits of royal children such as Felipe Próspero, son of Phillip IV painted by Diego Velázquez in 1659 and Infante Felipe Pedro Gabriel, son of Philip V, painted by Michel Ange Houasse in 1717 are such portrayals and attest to the practical custom of keeping boys in gowns or dresses until they could wear breeches or were toilet trained. The diminutive aristocrat is seated and dressed in the richest of silk brocades denoting his class, while holding a small bouquet of white and red roses, probably from the family’s bountiful gardens. The natural world was the subject of numerous treatises and expeditions as science was at the center of an Enlightened society. Gardens proliferated in Spain and Mexico during the eighteenth century.2 One such garden was built by Don Manuel de la Borda in Cuernavaca in 1783-84—an area where the elite creole society had well-appointed homes and beautiful gardens brimming with fruit trees and exotic plants from all over the world such as those that embellish this portrait’s carved wooden frame.3 The aristocratic child may also have been the heir to various noble titles and certainly his father’s properties but his remarkable portrait also offers a look at colonial society in the eighteenth century imbued with the advanced ideas of the Enlightenment transitioning into the modern era.
M. J. Aguilar, Ph.D.