In 1656, King Philip IV of Spain commissioned a portrait by Diego Velázquez, his longtime court artist. It’s a plain, dark portrait. The king is partly facing the observer and is only visible ...

The wives of all three of King Philip’s adult sons hailed from the neighboring region of Burgundy. ... Philip IV died in November 1314, and Margaret’s husband succeeded him as Louis X.

Philip IV was in trouble. Spain’s far-flung empire, arguably the world’s most powerful, had seriously wobbled in the 1640s — and so had the king’s family life.

Portraits of Philip IV typically show a tall, lantern-jawed figure with red hair, full lips, and upturned mustache, a smug king dressed in silk hose and brocade doublets. But in Wunder’s book, a ...

That year, the first Zurbaran exhibit in modern times was held in Madrid, and the experts marveled that so little was known of the artist whom King Philip IV named “painter of the King and king ...