Don Baltasar Carlos with a Dwarf

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Don Baltasar Carlos with a Dwarf: Diego Velazquez

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Diego Velazquez Oil Painting - Don Baltasar Carlos with a Dwarf

Keywords: Don, Baltasar, Carlos, Dwarf

Work Overview: Don Baltasar Carlos with a Dwarf (Prince Balthasar Charles With a Dwarf)
Spanish: El príncipe Baltasar Carlos con un enano
Artist Diego Velázquez
Year 1631
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 128 cm × 102 cm (50 in × 40 in)
Location Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Prince Balthasar Charles With a Dwarf is a 1631 portrait by Diego Velázquez of Balthasar Charles, Prince of Asturias and a court dwarf. It is now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

The prince is shown in the uniform of a captain-general (adapted to his infant state but still including a commander's baton in his right hand, a shoulder sash and a sword hilt in his left hand). The dwarf holds an apple and a rattle, to contrast with the heir to the most powerful monarchy in Europe, who is shown as already in military training and not needing these usual children's attributes. The prince's static posture, in contrast to the dynamism of the dwarf's figure, turning to contemplate the prince, has caused some art historians to think that the painting was originally only of the prince, with the dwarf added later.

As court painter to Philip IV, Velázquez painted countless portraits of the king and his family, images at once majestic and human. This charming, child-size version of the traditional royal portrait may commemorate the swearing of allegiance by the nobles of Castile to the two-year-old heir to the throne. Baltasar Carlos is shown standing regally still beside one of the lively dwarves who served as jesters and companions at the Spanish court. The dwarf’s rattle and apple can be interpreted both as playthings appropriate to the prince’s age and as symbols of the orb and scepter he will someday wield as king of Spain.

The long-awaited heir to the throne, Prince Baltasar Carlos, born on 17 October 1629, was his parents' (Philip IV and Queen Isabel) pride and joy. While Velázquez was in Rome he attended one of the glittering parties held in many European cities to celebrate the child's birth. No sooner was he back in Madrid than he was commissioned to paint the prince, now sixteen months old, and in another portrait of the same subject he shows the fair-haired little boy with a curious playmate. Dressed in a magnificently embroidered ceremonial robe which makes him into a miniature adult, the prince is standing on a carpeted step beneath a draped wine-red curtain, holding a baton and a dagger in his little hands. The steel gorget indicates his future role as a military commander. His face, expressing all the charm of his French mother in childish miniature, is turned towards another child in the left foreground of the picture, and the child's abnormally large head is looking back at him.

This figure is a dwarf, it is now thought probably a girl, one of the human toys so popular at many European courts of the time. The physically handicapped figure of the dwarf holds a silver rattle and an apple in imitation of an orb and sceptre, and is acting the part of a comic major-domo to the future little king. One wonders whether their Majesties and the courtiers laughed at this picture and the court painter's amusing idea.

The prince's face is modelled with gentle regularity, whereas the paint is applied to the head of the female dwarf with more irregular granulation. This contrasting brushwork is often used by Velázquez in his pictures to accentuate certain features of their content.

In Spain (and other countries too) there was a long tradition of including dwarfs in royal portraits as subordinate figures. Basically, these deformed little creatures were merely attributes of the royal dignity, part of the furnishings of the court and regarded as neuter beings rather than fully human.

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