Spanish painter, pupil and successor of Sanchez Coello, becoming court painter to Philip III in 1596. His official portraits are flat and hieratic, but his religious works show the influence of Italian Caravaggismo. There are works in the Escorial and Madrid and in several other museums. He also painted the retable for the monastery church of St Augustine, Valladolid.
When Philip III ascended the Spanish throne, his portraitist was awaiting him, Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, who had been appointed royal painter in the final years of Philip II’s reign. Pantoja’s early career is not well documented, but it is known that he was born in Valladolid in 1553 and studied with Sanchez Coello, whose path as a portraitist he scrupulously followed at the start of his career. However, in his later years, he enriched his style by absorbing new ideas from contemporary Flemish painters, including Rubens. Pantoja’s portraits of the duke and duchess of Lerma are painted in a freer technique and endow the sitters with greater psychological vitality than is found in the implacable portraits of Sanchez Coello.
The full-length portrait of King Philip III (1578-1621) of Spain shows him as general of the infantry. In the background the siege of Ostend (1601-1604) is depicted.
The full-length portraits represent King Philip IV of Spain (1605-1665) in spiritual attire and his sister Infanta Anna (1601-1666),
Pantoja de la Cruz was familiar with the work of Venetian painters, but he took from them only the impressive pose of the formal portrait and avoided the expression of feelings and emotions. The main element in this portrait of a prominent aristocrat is the armour, which allows us to judge the skill and style of Spanish armourers, who found inspiration in Moorish ornament.
Philip Emmanuel (Felipe Manuel, 1586-1605) was the grandson of Philip II. The artist represents the prince as the heir to the throne in Savoya wearing an armor of Lombard origin and the necklace of the Order of the Annunciation, the highest order of the dukedom of Savoya.
This is one of the most significant and felicitous works by Pantoja, comparable only to the portrait of Philip III in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum where he is depicted full length. The armour in both portraits is the same, as is the bearing, yet the three-quarter figure is more fortunate than the full-length one, in which the compass position of the legs is ungainly.
Between 1600 and 1607 Pantoja painted sixty-six portraits of thirty-nine different members of the royal family as well as other members of the aristocracy. Although the identity of the sitter of the present portrait is unknown, she is most likely a member of the extended royal family, the wife of a courtier of Phillip III (1578-1621) or a lady-in-waiting to his wife, Margaret of Austria (1584-1611).
The influence of Mor and Titian can be observed on this painting.
