Mariana de Neoburgo, última reina de los Austrias. Vida y legado artístico

Maria Anna of Neuburg (1667−1740), the second wife of Charles II, was queen consort of Spain for ten years and queen dowager for another forty. However, she is a little-known figure to whom historians have barely paid attention. This study takes a look at her life, her image and her artistic patronage, which was not unaffected by the heightened political tension that characterised European history around 1700 and resulted in a change of dynasty in Spain. Against this turbulent international backdrop, the survey of the queen’s life explores in depth important aspects of court art such as the decoration of her apartments in the royal palaces and sites in which she lived, drawing on documents held in Spanish and foreign archives. It also examines the residences she occupied as a widow in Toledo and Guadalajara, as well as her homes and palaces in Bayonne during her thirty-two-year exile. The approximately one hundred known portraits of her help both unravel her personality and trace the artistic, stylistic and conceptual evolution of the genre over more than half a century, showing how her image – first as queen consort and subsequently as queen dowager – was shaped and publicly projected.