Follower of Federico de Madrazo, XIX century.

Follower of FEDERICO DE MADRAZO Y KUNTZ (Rome, 1815 - Madrid, 1894); XIX century.
"Portrait of Isabel II.
Oil on canvas.
Measurements: 129 x 83 cm.
Copy of the original by Federico de Madrazo, made in 1850 and preserved in the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See. The piece represents the queen Isabel II, in three quarters, slightly tilted to the right and looking at the spectator, in a palatial interior. She wears a blue satin dress adorned with lace and silver ruffles. She wears a bandeau hairstyle adorned with a tiara of pearls and diamonds from which the veil hangs and a large pearl necklace. The table, dressed with a red velvet pastry case, shows a velvet cushion of the same color with the royal attributes, the scepter and the crown.
As the Museo Nacional del Romanticismo of Madrid points out in the cataloguing of a copy similar to the present work "This prototype of official portrait was one of the three that Federico created of Isabel II, represented at the age of twenty, it is considered as his most popular image and of which probably a greater number of copies and versions are known, both by Madrazo himself and by other painters of very diverse quality, spreading widely in different seats of public organizations and also in the aristocratic and bourgeois collections of the whole kingdom".
It is not surprising that, being an official portrait, Madrazo reproduced this model on numerous occasions, although among them there are certain variations. This is the case of the position of the left hand, which in the copy of the Holy See appears at waist level (as here), instead of resting on the table, or the gloves, which can wear one or the other hand indistinctly, with the other in different positions. Also the format can undergo variations, since both in the version of the Holy See and the one of the National Museum of Fine Arts of Havana, to cite some examples, they are of full body, while both this copy that occupies us and others, are made in three quarters. In all of them the author gives the queen a sweet expression, stylizing her figure and features, as was usual in his portraits of the sovereign".