MADRID.- After months in the expert hands of restorers, one of the Spanish Golden Age's greatest treasures has galloped back into the spotlight. The Museo Nacional del Prado, with the essential support of the Iberdrola España Foundation, today unveiled the fully restored equestrian portrait of King Philip IV by Diego Velázquez. The masterpiece, a cornerstone of the historic Hall of Realms project, is now on display, shimmering with the brilliant colors the Sevillian master originally intended.

For four months, restorer María Álvarez Garcillán meticulously worked on the painting, stripping away layers of oxidized varnish that had dulled the canvas to a sickly yellow. The cleaning has dramatically resurrected the work’s chromatic richness, allowing viewers to appreciate the sheer genius of Velázquez's technique—the combination of dry, rapid brushstrokes with heavy impasto that makes the king, horse, sky, and landscape emerge with breathtaking naturalness.

As Prado Museum Director Miguel Falomir noted, the restoration is a fresh opportunity to "verify the absolute mastery of Velázquez and his debt to Titian," whose serene approach to equestrian portraiture inspired this work.

The Mystery of the Cut Corner

The restoration team faced a unique challenge: the painting’s tumultuous history, specifically its awkward fit in the original Hall of Realms at the Buen Retiro Palace.

Velázquez created this series of royal portraits—including those of Philip IV’s parents and the recently restored portrait of his wife, Isabel de Borbón—to visually reinforce the continuity of the Spanish monarchy. However, a structural miscalculation meant the massive canvases were too wide for the space allotted. Velázquez’s solution? He simply had wide strips added to the sides of the Philip IV and Isabel de Borbón paintings, expanding them by over 60 cm.

But this enlargement created a new problem, blocking the Hall's access doors. The ingenious, if brutal, fix was to cut out the encroaching lower-left corner of the canvas and attach the fragment directly to the swinging door.

"The intervention has given the work its original appearance back," said Jaime Alfonsín, President of the Iberdrola España Foundation. "It is magnificent, not just in composition, but in recovering its great splendor."

Centuries later, when the paintings were moved to the current Royal Palace, the severed corners were stitched back into the main canvas. The restoration has now carefully treated the remnants of that traumatic surgery, removing the thick stucco and sutures to make the repair less visually disruptive, focusing instead on fixing vulnerable paint areas and achieving a harmonious final image.

A Deliberate Blank Space

Painted between late 1634 and early 1635, the portrait is unique within the royal series because of its lower left corner. Though it appears blank, this is a conscious artistic statement. Velázquez often included a piece of paper in this spot for his signature, but here, the empty space serves as a bold claim of authorship. The artist’s style and technique were so distinct, so recognizable, that he didn't need a signature; the work signed itself.

Now, this iconic piece, with its newly recovered vibrancy, takes its place in Room 12 of the Villanueva building, once again asserting the genius of Velázquez and inviting a fresh appreciation of his philosophical exploration of power, nature, and art itself. The restoration ensures that this vital piece of Spanish and art history will continue to inspire for generations to come.