Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Blue Dress

Velázquez painted this portrait of the Infanta Margarita Teresa in 1659, the year before he died, and it is one of the last pictures he completed. She was the daughter of King Philip IV of Spain and was eight years old at the time. The portrait was never meant to stay in Madrid: Philip IV sent it to the imperial court in Vienna as a gift, so that the family there could see how the girl was growing up. She had been promised in marriage to her uncle, Emperor Leopold I, and the two married in 1666. Velázquez had served Philip IV since 1623 and spent almost his whole career inside the royal household, where portraying the king's children was part of the work. In these late years he painted with very thin, loosely placed touches that only settle into solid form when the picture is seen from a distance, a way of working that painters admired long afterwards. It has remained in Vienna ever since it arrived and now belongs to the Kunsthistorisches Museum.