This colourful and delicate painted portrait of Anna, Queen of Spain is a posthumous portrait finished approximately some twenty years after the Queen’s death. Based around some of the grand portrait images produced during her lifetime this intimate head and shoulders image depicts Anna as a young lady bedecked with jewel encrusted robes prominently displaying around her neck the double-headed eagle of the Habsburg imperial family.

Born in Cigales, the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II, Anna’s younger days were spent in Vienna. She was intended to marry her first cousin, Don Carlos, heir to the Spanish throne. He however died in July 1568, quickly followed, in October, by Elisabeth de Valois, third wife of her uncle, King Philip II of Spain (1556-1598). Maximilian seems to have wasted little time in diplomatically offering Anna as a suitable fourth wife, which was in turn accepted.
In 1570 Anna arrived in Spain, accompanied by her brothers Albrecht and Wenzel, who remained there to be educated at the Spanish Court. On 12 November 1570, in Segovia, she married the Spanish King and they became the parents of five children. In 1571 Spain won the sea-battle at Lepanto and their first son, Ferdinand, was born. However, of the five children, only the fourth, Felipe, survived and, in due course, succeeded to the Spanish throne.

In 1580 Anna and her husband travelled to the Portuguese border in an attempt to establish the king’s right to the Portuguese throne after the death of the aging and childless King Enrique. Travelling as far as Badajoz, Philip became seriously ill with influenza and whilst taking care of her husband, Anna also became infected, tragically dying aged only thirty.