Mariana de Austria

Museo del Prado exhibition devoted to Mariana of Austria, the last queen of the Habsburg dynasty, and the construction of her public image through painting, sculpture and graphic arts.

The exhibition traces the image that the queen built over the course of her life and her exercise of power, and how that image spread at one of the most delicate moments of the Hispanic Monarchy. It is a project that the Prado presents for the first time devoted to a patroness of the arts.

The route brings together works of painting, sculpture, medals, textiles, illuminated books and prints. It shows the iconographic strategies that Mariana and her court painters employed to legitimise her position and reinforce her authority in an adverse political context, with an eye on the European courts. These strategies draw on the visual tradition of the Habsburg women, who for more than two centuries represented female power, and the queen adapted those models to assert her own place.

The exhibition forms part of the museum's commitment to giving visibility to the role of women in art, both as creators and as figures represented. It is held in the galleries of the Edificio de los Jerónimos, in Madrid.