The famed Spanish court painter Bernardo López Piquer (1799-1874) painted Queen María Isabel of Braganza as the founder of the Museo del Prado (María Isabel de Braganza, fundadora del Museo del Prado), a monumental work of great institutional and historical importance. The painting is a posthumous work commissioned by King Ferdinand VII to honor his second wife, Queen María Isabel of Braganza (1797-1818), who died in childbirth only a year before the museum’s opening. The queen’s elongated oval face was based on a portrait bust painted by López Piquer’s father, the primary disciple of the First Court Painter Vicente López Portaña, about the time of the royal marriage in 1816.
The painting is rich in symbolic elements and historical and political references and helps to explain the queen’s evolution, its central theme, which was the genesis of the National Gallery of Spain. Queen María Isabel is standing in a palace’s luxurious interior. With her hand, she restricts a set of plans, created for the floor of a beautiful table, by two sculpted golden winged lions. Her right hand is pointing out of what seems to be a large open window towards the monumental facade of the museum building, which is neoclassical.
The building was built in 1785 for the Cabinet of Natural Sciences by the master architect Juan de Villanueva. The painting is a permanent record of the historic transformation that took place as a result of the queen’s desire to preserve hundreds of masterpieces from being lost to decay and to create a public royal museum for painting and sculpture in a war-torn building.
López Piquer’s ability to deftly handle the canvas is typical of the late Spanish academic tradition, with which he is familiar. As queen and ruler, the queen wears a beautiful satin dress with a beautiful crimson velvet mantle, trimmed with ermine fur. The artist’s ability to pay great attention to detail is demonstrated in the costumes, as well as in the gold embroidery and royal symbols, including the sash of the Royal Order of Noble Ladies of Queen Maria Luisa.
López Piquer takes the queen beyond a mortal kingship by creating an idealized light that is ethereal and divine, and elevating her above a mortal king, so she becomes an allegorical interpreter of the cultural enlightenment. Gabriele Finaldi and other recent art historians consider this portrait to be one of the most emblematic visual symbols in Spanish history, a direct artistic link between the absolute monarchy of the Bourbon restoration and the setting up of the biggest cultural legacy in Spanish history.
Bernardo López Piquer's Queen María Isabel of Braganza as Founder of the Museo del Prado is a portrait whereby royal identity becomes a form of cultural patronage. Executed in 1829 after the death of María Isabel, it features the Queen pointing towards the building of the Prado and her hand on the gallery plans. According to Museo del Prado records, she showed serious concern in transforming the building of Juan de Villanueva into a museum, and was an art lover and amateur artist and art patron herself.
Additionally, there is significance in the contrast between her bright red dress and the utilitarian blueprints. She is shown as both a queen and an academic, actively involved in the institution's construction. The museum (seen through the window) lends her action a sense of intent: She seems to be pointing an actor's gesture away from her and toward a legacy.
It could suggest the idea that our greatest gift to others may be an institution that will stand the test of time. As its only 'posthumous' aspect, it is also perhaps unavoidably mournful –she was not alive to see its foundation (it was established less than a year after her death). And so a portrait becomes a poignant mise-en-scéne of failure, longing and omnipresent cultural memory.
