A new portrait of Mariana of Austria as Regent, by Juan Carreño de Miranda, at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. Reflections on the emergence and consolidation of a model

Abstract

The restoration by the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando of a portrait of Queen Mariana of Austria as Regent, formerly thought to be a copy after Juan Carreño de Miranda, has shed further light on its history and provenance. The cleaning process brought out the quality of the work and also gave us fresh insights into Carreño’s working method and his dependence on previous models. A thoroughgoing tracking of the painting through royal inventories has also confirmed the Carreño attribution.