Female taste at the baroque Court. The portraits of Isabel de Borbón and Mariana of Austria

Abstract

Women's fashion has been a constant display of power and distinction throughout history. In baroque Spain, full of artifice, theatricality and opulence, the clothing of royal women marked an influence on the aristocratic and wealthy classes of society, while the protagonists reaffirmed their role of authority and power, of privileged position and protagonist. The 17th century portrait allows us to discover and contextualize that the clothing showed a compendium of tastes on the part of the two wives of Philip IV, marked by the place of birth and the country in which they reigned. The analysis of a series of portraits of both queens made by not only relevant authors, such as Velázquez or Rubens, but also by others less known or anonymously authored, is interesting. All of them analyzed to appreciate the taste and fashion of the Spanish royalty of the time, and as a reflection of the personality and way of being of both sovereigns.