X-Nico

Portrait of Juan Martínez Montañés

The trip was to make a clay bust of Philip IV of Spain as the modello for the Florentine sculptor Pietro Tacca's bronze equestrian statue of Philip (the statue now on plaza de Oriente in Madrid), which is what he is shown doing in the portrait, shaping the clay with a stick (though the bust itself is only in outline, since the painting is unfinished).

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