El Prado en femenino: Mariana de Neoburgo

A pesar de una vida itinerante, de sus serios problemas de salud, provocados en gran medida por la ansiada búsqueda de un heredero, e incluso de los problemas económicos que padeció tras la muerte de su marido, Carlos II; Mariana de Neoburgo fue una de las grandes promotoras artísticas del siglo XVII.

El Museo del Prado atesora las historias de grandes mujeres, protagonistas en el ámbito del patronazgo artístico. La serie documental “El Prado en femenino” nos acerca a estas reinas, princesas, regentes y gobernadoras que contribuyeron poderosamente tanto a la creación y consolidación del Museo como a enriquecer las colecciones que tenemos la fortuna de poder admirar aún hoy.

Participantes: Ángel Aterido, Universidad Complutense de Madrid; Gloria Martínez, InvestigArt;
Andrés Úbeda, Museo Nacional del Prado; Álvaro Pascual Chenel, Universidad de Valladolid.

Dirección: Sonia Prior
Guion: Noelia García y Sonia Prior
Asesora experta: Noelia García
Realización: Ainhoa Andraka, Zuri Goikoetxea
Producción: Ainhoa Andraka, Zuri Goikoetxea
Música original: Oier Aldekoa
Dirección de fotografía: Juantxu Beloki
Operadores de cámara: Juantxu Beloki, Adrián Nogales, Carolina Molinari
Dirección de producción: Itziar García-Zubiri
Auxiliares de producción: Maitane Pérez, Alberto Torralba, Enma García Olloqui, Alicia Torres Sastrús, Carlos Díaz Moracho
Sonido directo: Kiko Monzón
Montaje: Ainhoa Andraka
Auxiliares de montaje: Hodei Garikoitz Mendia, Nahia Arzamendi
Postproducción de sonido: Víctor Carretón
Postproducción Y correción de color: Georgy Barklaya
Diseño gráfico: Vedia Design Studio
Traducciones: Ren Ebel
Estudio De Montaje Y Postproducción: Doxa Studio

Capítulo anterior: https://youtu.be/qrRmAB5PkkU
Más información en: https://www.museodelprado.es/el-prado-en-femenino

Maria Anna of Neuburg arrived in Spain in the spring of 1690 to marry King Charles II. Great hopes were placed on this union, especially regarding the queen, as securing the dynasty’s continuity was a top priority at that time. However, the king’s death in 1700, without an heir, would lead to a succession war in Spain between the Houses of Austria and Bourbon. This conflict culminated in the victory of the French dynasty and the accession of Philip V. The queen’s support for her nephew, Archduke Charles of Habsburg, rival of Philip V, earned her animosity from the new monarch who, in retaliation, banished her from the royal court. In 1706, Maria Anna of Neuburg left the Alcázar of Toledo, where she had resided since 1701, to establish her residence in the French city of Bayonne where she lived for 32 years. In 1738, after being pardoned by Philip V, the queen dowager settled in the Palace of El Infantado, where she passed away within a year of her arrival in Guadalajara. Despite her nomadic life, her serious health issues largely due to the elusive quest for an heir that never came to be, as well as economic woes following Charles II’s death, Maria Anna of Neuburg was a major artistic patron of the 17th century. Her impressive portrait gallery reflects the exchange of works among the European Baroque courts. It also gathers a rich representation of devotional scenes, mythological themes, and floral still lifes, all favored by the Queen. Thanks to her, the Prado Museum now boasts fundamental works by Parmigianino, Pierre Mignard, Carreño de Miranda, and notably Luca Giordano, to whom, as we’ll see, the Queen entrusted some major commissions. The case of Queen Maria Anna of Neuburg is quite unique among the queens of Spain. Not only was she the last queen of the Habsburg dynasty, but historical conditions have decisively influenced her image, including the assessment of her role as a patron in her art collection. Firstly, her status as Charles II’s second wife has tainted her image because the negative portrayal of the king by traditional historiography has influenced the perception of the queen and her artistic endeavors. Second, hers is an unusual condition because she’s a widowed queen who, without offspring, isn’t a regent, having almost no governmental role. A third condition shaping the understanding of her work is her sovereignty in three different courts. Her collection, a product of her tumultuous life, isn’t assembled until after her death in Guadalajara. Maria Anna stands out amidst a fascinating female panorama. Because, in the Neuburg family, various female relatives married some of the most important kings, dukes and rulers. Of Maria Anna’s sisters, for example, one married the Duke of Parma, and the other married the Emperor. There’s a family network with artistic consequences, notably Maria Anna’s collection ending up in Spain due to her niece Elisabeth Farnese, daughter of her sister Dorothea Sophie, who became the second wife of Philip V and inherited the entire collection, and that’s why a significant portion of those paintings is in the Prado. After the death of Spanish king Charles II’s first wife, Marie Louise of Orléans, in February 1689, the sovereign was urged to quickly take a new wife who could continue the Spanish throne and the chosen one was Countess Palatine of the Rhine, Maria Anna of Neuburg. Immediately, portraits of the queen began to emerge that were disseminated throughout Europe. These were filled with symbolism, depicting her as the elected queen of Spain. An example of these is the portrait held in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, painted by artist Eglon van der Neer, which is a small sketch, likely for a larger composition. In it, Maria Anna appears in full regal attire: mantle, throne, crown, and royal scepter, in a portrait that is eminently commemorative of her election as the Countess Palatine of the Rhine and new queen of Spain. But her image circulated not only through canvases, but also through engravings and commemorative medals, which were highly effective in distributing her image throughout Europe. The prints will serve to illustrate the laudatory texts written about her at this time, while the medals will be distributed mainly throughout the continent once the proxy wedding takes place in Neuburg, on August 28, 1689. In these, not only does the face of Maria Anna appear, but also that of Charles II, as well as various allusions to love, marriage, prosperity, and fertility, which were expected to arrive very soon after the wedding. A multitude of images of Maria Anna will be produced upon her arrival in Spain. Some will be based on those made of Marie Louise of Orléans, and others will take as a model, copying or reinventing it, the portrait painted by Claudio Coello, court painter of Charles II, upon the sovereign’s arrival in Madrid. This, due to its beauty and the accuracy of the composition, will have enormous success that will extend its reproduction, well into the 1690s. It will be necessary to wait until the very last years of the 17th century for the arrival of new influences from France to change the court portrait in Spain. A catalyst for this situation will be, during the summer and autumn of 1696, the illness suffered by Maria Anna of Neuburg and Charles II. From then on, both of them had to shave their heads and began wearing powdered wigs in the French style known as "in folio." From that moment on, she became aware of the role that portraiture could play in conveying messages with political undertones. An example of this is a portrait in which Maria Anna wears on her chest a large jewel with a double-headed eagle and an imperial crown. A portrait that can be read, without a doubt, as a nod to Emperor Leopold I and his interests in the succession to the Spanish throne. In line with this new interest in a more symbolic portrait and the desire to have a more idealized portrait, given the deteriorated physical appearance that the queen showed after multiple illnesses, Maria Anna employed a new court painter, the Frenchman Jacques Courtilleau. This will lead to a more idealized, severe, and rigid portrait of the queen and to further solidify her position within the court, she would again use a series of symbolic elements such as scepters and crowns. The Prado Museum preserves two of these portraits. In one of them, we see Maria Anna standing, fully dressed in the French style and resting her hand on a small white and black furry dog of the breed known as King Charles, in a direct reference to Maria Anna’s loyalty to Charles II. At a time when the king’s health was already very precarious and the pressures on Maria Anna to take sides, either with the French or the imperial faction, were constant, Maria Anna wanted to make it clear through this portrait that her only loyalty was to her husband, Charles II. After the death of Charles II on November 1, 1700, Maria Anna was left alone. And with the imminent arrival of Philip V at court, her situation became more complex. It is possible that she commissioned a portrait at that time from her court painter, Jacques Courtilleau, to make clear both the pain surrounding the death of her husband, Charles II and her strength and determination to assert her status and role as queen dowager. She survived her husband by 40 years, and much of that time she spent in forced exile in the French town of Bayonne. During these years, Maria Anna once again had as her portraitist Jacques Courtilleau. His successor would be the Frenchman Robert Gabriel Gence, who, in the service of Maria Anna of Neuburg, created everything from grand ceremonial portraits to much simpler bust or three-quarter portraits depicting her as queen dowager, which were distributed throughout the continent. In 1739, Maria Anna was finally able to return to Spain, the country where she had been queen, to die. She passed away on July 16, 1740, in Guadalajara, and leaving as her universal heir her niece, Queen Elisabeth Farnese. Among the numerous paintings left by Maria Anna, Elisabeth made a selection for her collection, and the rest were sold at public auction. Among those selected by Elisabeth, none were portraits of her aunt. This partly explains the scarcity of representations we have of the queen in Spanish public collections. Nevertheless, we are fortunate to have within the halls of the Prado Museum one of the finest likenesses ever created of the sovereign. This pairs with another portrait of King Charles II, both painted by the Neapolitan painter Luca Giordano, who arrived in Spain in 1692. His first task was to decorate the staircase and vaults of the monastery of El Escorial, but over time, during the ten years he spent in Madrid, he undertook many others. One of the most significant, undoubtedly, was reshaping the monarch’s image. A sick monarch, a monarch with a fragile physical appearance, increasingly more fragile throughout her reign, as a result of her physical condition and multiple illnesses. In this context, Luca Giordano had to paint the queen, and he did so in an equestrian portrait whose meaning, whose purpose, is not entirely clear. Apparently, it was part of a pair with Charles II, two equestrian portraits that face each other, which were probably intended to be viewed together and thus were likely not conceived for the Hall of Mirrors of the Alcázar of Madrid, where queens were not invited. Another setting must have been intended for this portrait, or perhaps they were paired at a later time. We don’t know. The iconography developed by Giordano in this equestrian portrait is very interesting. The Neuburg family, the family to which this monarch belongs, was known for its enormous fertility. That was probably the reason why the queen was chosen, among other candidates. Giordano’s portrait may allude to this circumstance. The naiads offering her products from the sea, the angels appearing at the top of the composition with the horn of plenty, are all symbols we could interpret as elements alluding precisely to that fertility and the desire for the arrival of a male heir to the throne of Spain. That much desired heir that allows the dynasty to continue. The equestrian portrait by Luca Giordano, whatever its final destination, is one of the important works of Giordano’s time in Spain. And this is for many reasons. The one that matters to us today is that it shaped the image of monarchy, shaping the image of a sick monarch and shaping the powerful image, very powerful, of his consort, Queen Maria Anna of Neuburg. The equestrian portrait of Queen Maria Anna of Neuburg painted towards the end of Charles II’s reign, by Luca Giordano, refers us to previous iconographic models, especially in the portraits of Queen Margaret Theresa of Spain, wife of Philip III, and Elisabeth of Bourbon, first wife of Philip IV, painted around 1628-35. As more direct iconographic sources, we have the equestrian portrait of Queen Mariana of Austria, second wife of Philip IV, and also the equestrian portrait of the first wife of Charles II, Marie Louise of Orléans, painted by Francisco Rizi, to commemorate the queen’s entrance. In this way, we have a complete sequence of equestrian portraits of these women who formed King Charles II’s closest circle. First, in the museum itself, there is a large-scale drawing of high technical quality, recently attributed to Herrera the Younger, which depicts unique iconography for a queen of the House of Austria, in this case Queen Mariana of Austria, serving in her role as regent during the early part of Charles II’s reign, while he was still a minor. This portrait introduces new iconographic elements because it depicts the queen in her nun-like attire, as she was commonly portrayed after the death of Philip IV, wearing a hat and also carrying a general’s baton, a symbol of authority, less common iconography for a queen and more typical of male royal portraits. This portrait carries significant political and propagandistic weight in the early days of the reign under regency, a regency that faced political opposition, and it certainly refers to one of the roles assumed by Queen Mariana of Austria, which is the "regis officium", the role of military leadership carried out by the Queen herself. Additionally, this drawing makes a direct iconographic reference to the portrait painted by Rubens of Queen Marie de’ Medici at Jülich for the decoration of the Luxembourg Palace in Paris in the late 1620s. Next, we have the equestrian portrait of Queen Marie Louise of Orléans, first wife of Charles II, painted by Francisco Rizi, alongside another of her husband, Charles II, both of which were part of the temporary decorations erected in Madrid for the entrance of Queen Marie Louise of Orléans. In these portraits, the queen is depicted on horseback, wearing a colorful dress worn only on special occasions, which has a long train that covers the horse’s backside, thus linking it in some way to the earlier portraits of Margaret, and Elisabeth of Bourbon and also displaying some important dynastic jewels emblematic of the crown, such as the diamond known as "El Estanque" (The Pond), and the famous "Perla Peregrina" (The Wanderess Pearl). Additionally, some notable iconographic elements in the painting include, for example, a segment of rainbow visible in the corner, and in the background you can see a representation of a building that can be identified as the Alcázar of Madrid, which was the final destination of this queen. It also contains fleur-de-lis motifs, alluding to her status as a queen of French origin, and pairs with the portrait of Charles II, where a piece of rainbow is also depicted, so that they would form a set. Rizi’s portrait directly links to the final portrait in this series, painted by Luca Giordano, of Maria Anna of Neuburg. There has been suggestion that it might be a sketch, a study, to deliberately evoke decorations made for the entrance of Queen Maria Anna of Neuburg in 1690. With this final portrait of the reign, we conclude this cycle, this circle of equestrian images that not only clearly evoke previous works, but that also have an important propagandistic element, alluding to dynastic continuity, to fertility, crucial for the fate of the monarchy. Based on inventories and paintings already located, we can determine a bit about Maria Anna’s tastes. Apart from religious painting, which is consistent in all queens, she had a rather particular taste for what we could call minor genres and cabinet painting. It turns out that she collects flower paintings, the garlands that are now a national heritage, but also some garlands with religious images painted by Daniel Seghers and Cornelis Schut, which are part of the Prado collections, are some examples of what we call minor genres, a style of decorative painting, not very large, intended to furnish chambers. Another part of the collection resulting from that dynastic life is in fact the portraits. On one hand, portraits of Charles II himself by Spanish painters. We have in the Prado both the bust portrait by Luca Giordano, which was long attributed to Claudio Coello, and Carreño’s portrait. And of course, family portraits. For example, that of Dorothea Sophie of Neuburg, Duchess of Parma, Molinaretto’s portrait which we have in the Prado collections, which we know comes from Maria Anna’s collection and will be inherited by her niece later on. Besides these two circumstances, which are of a personal nature, Maria Anna also commissions paintings from the artists working at the court. On one hand, we know about a continuation of this floral theme, or still-life theme, with Bartolomé Pérez. We know from inventories that the Queen’s cabinet was decorated by this artist who specialized in this subgenre of still-life painting. But also there’s the case of Luca Giordano. Luca Giordano will provide Charles II, but also Maria Anna herself, with religious painting, with mythological painting, that is quite particular in the courtly world, the series of Psyche and Cupid, which is currently in the collections of the English kings. Rounding out this collector’s profile a bit, there’s sculpture. We know she commissions works to Luisa Roldán. Some of them are not in the royal collections, but by donation are currently at San Fermín de los Navarros. The famous Christ Child carrying the cross, and the spectacular silver sculptures by Vaccaro of The Continents, which she donated to the Cathedral of Toledo. In other words, a bit of the queen’s biographical footprint, not only in the collections, but also in royal foundations, in places of worship. Among those minor genres are some landscape paintings, curiously of Flemish origin, some anonymous copperplate landscapes that are in the collections of the Prado and that, for many years until practically the 21st century, were directly assigned to Maria Anna’s niece, that is, to Elisabeth Farnese, but in reality, we have traces of a collecting practice far more intense than one might imagine. Thanks to her having left Elisabeth Farnese as her universal heir, many of the works that Maria Anna inherited from her husband Charles II returned to the Crown and, thus ultimately, to the Prado Museum. This is the case, for example, of the St. John the Baptist by Pierre Mignard or the Saint Barbara by Parmigianino. Thus, the magnificent collection of works by Luca Giordano conserved by the Museum, we owe partly to Maria Anna of Neuburg, who supported and patronized the artist during the years he remained in Madrid. Finally, Maria Anna of Neuburg must be credited for the change in taste that occurred in Spain at the end of the 17th century. She, long before the arrival of the Bourbon king Philip V to Spain, had already hired a French painter in her service and had definitively changed the style of representation and taste that at that time existed both in art and painting in Spain. Therefore, her figure is key to understanding the history of the Prado Museum’s collections, and to comprehending the artistic shift in Spain during the late 17th century.