Las Meninas

Mariana of Austria was Queen consort of Spain as the second wife of King Philip IV, who was also her maternal uncle. At the death of her husband in 1665, Mariana became Queen... regent, and she remained an influential figure during the reign of her son Charles II, the last Spanish Habsburg. Born as Maria Anna on 22 December 1634 in Wiener Neustadt, Austria, she was the granddaughter of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II. Her parents were King Ferdinand III of Hungary and Maria Anna of Spain, the sister of Mariana's future husband, King Philip IV of Spain. Her father, who would become Emperor in 1637, was as yet only King of Hungary and Bohemia, and was away for most of his wife's pregnancy campaigning in the Thirty Years' War. Maria Anna, was the second of six children, three of which died in early childhood. Her oldest brother, Ferdinand IV of Hungary died young. Only Maria Anna and her younger brother, the future Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, lived to reach old age. Maria Anna was destined from her early years to continue the marriage policy between the two branches of the Habsburg family, the Austrian and the Spanish.
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Philip IV of Spain was King of Castile and Aragon between 1621 and 1665, and King of Portugal until 1640. He was also king of Naples and Sicily as Philip III. Philip is... remembered for his patronage of the arts, including such artists as Diego Velázquez, and his rule over Spain during the challenging period of the Thirty Years War . On the eve of his death in 1665, the Spanish Empire had reached its seventeenth century territorial zenith, spanning a then unheard of 12.2 million square kilometres , but in other respects was in decline, a process to which Philip's inability to achieve successful domestic and military reform is felt to have contributed. Philip IV was born in Valladolid, and was the eldest son of Philip III and his wife, Margaret of Austria. Aged ten, he was married to Elisabeth of France in 1615, although the relationship does not appear to have always been close; some have even suggested that Olivares, his key minister, later deliberately tried to keep the two apart to maintain his influence, encouraging Philip to take mistresses instead.
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