Velazquez, Belotto i Canaletto – Art History Museum – Vienna
In the room 9 i 10 you can get acquainted with the canvases of the Spaniards. Portrait of Don Carlos by Alonso Sanchez Coello depicts the mentally and physically handicapped son Philip II, who was imprisoned by his father some four years later and died. In a small number of works by Diego Velazquez (1599-1660), most of which were collected as gifts from the Spanish Habsburgs for the Austrian part of the family, there is a portrait of Queen Maria Anna of Spain, whose hairstyle is twice as large as the face and two portraits of Charles of Spain. The early portrait of Juan Carreño de Miranda can be terrifying, although in reality the model was most likely even ugly. The most famous works show Infanta Małgorzata Teresa, who, at the age of three, was already engaged to her uncle, the future emperor Leopold I and the ailing Philip, son of Philip II, who died shortly after the portrait was completed.
In room VII you can see the images of 18th-century Vienna commissioned by the Habsburgs from Bernardo Bellotto – the view from the Upper Belvedere has changed little since then. The Viennese insistently call Belotto Canaletto, though in fact he was the nephew and apprentice of the latter. Pictures of the real Canaletto hang in the adjoining room, where next to the works of his compatriot, Francesco Guardiego, there are postcard pictures of Venice.