In the Louvre collection there is but one picture from which it is
possible to judge the greatness of Velazquez’s art. That picture is
the deservedly famous and often-copied portrait of the little _Infanta
Margarita_ (No. 1731, Plate XXV.), which has rightly been placed in the
Salon Carré among the proudest possessions which the Gallery can boast.
The little princess, who was born in 1651, the first child of Mariana
of Austria, is here depicted at the age of about four, so that the date
of the portrait may safely be assumed to be about the year 1655, and
not 1659, as suggested by M. Lafenestre. She is dressed in a white robe
with black lace trimmings. A pink ribbon is tied on her right side to
her soft light golden hair, which falls in curls to her shoulders; her
right hand rests upon a chair, whilst the left, the fingers of which
have been repainted owing to the addition of a narrow strip of canvas
at the bottom, holds a flower. On the top the words LINFANTE MARGVERITE
are painted in heavy block letters across the whole width of the
canvas. This picture, in which childlike ingenuousness is so happily
blended with quaint dignity, and in which even the forbidding ugliness
of the dress of the period cannot destroy the little princess’s grace
and doll-like charm, Velazquez has surely left to the world one of the
most entrancing portraits of lovable childhood that is to be found in
the whole history of art.