Infanta Margarita - Technique and Styles
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Infanta Margarita
ca. 1654
Diego Velázquez
The demand for portraits of Leopold's future bride was so great that Velázquez often painted Margarita between her second and eighth birthday. He was masterly in recording the hardly noticeable changes as she was growing, achieving the highest peak of "realism" through strict observation.
He used clothing to help achieve his effect: as a little girl she wears silverish-pink, slightly older whitish-silver and as an eight-year-old, consciously a princess, she wears a silverish-blue dress. Here she is presented in her "middle childhood",