In 1666, the marriage of Emperor Leopold I and Infanta Margarita Teresa of Spain solidified a political alliance between the Austrian and Spanish sides of the Habsburg family. They were also both uncle and niece and first cousins, such was the intense insularity of royal marriages intended to gain or maintain power across Europe.
The union was arranged while Margarita Teresa was very young—she was only around 15 when they married—and during the years leading up to the wedding, court painter Diego Velázquez created numerous portraits of her, which were sent to Leopold I in the form of tokens or updates documenting the imperial bride’s development into a young woman.
For Derrick Guild, portraits of the likes of the Infanta and the Spanish royal family, such as Velázquez’s seminal “Las Meninas,” provide the starting point for a painting practice that examines social status, mores, and expectations. Through 17th- and 18th-century portraits, Guild examines art as a vehicle for social and diplomatic relations, considering how painting was used to impart very specific messages and emphasize prestige.
His “Label Infanta Margarita, after Velazquez and del Mazo,” for example, reproduces a portrait of the Spanish princess across a gridded composition of paper luggage tags, nodding to the harsh reality that the young woman’s sole role in life was to essentially be shipped off to marry well and produce heirs.
Margarita Teresa had four children (and two miscarriages) during her six-year marriage to Leopold I. She died at the age of 22, and only one of her children lived to adulthood. The grid-like composition, set against a black background, also invokes a cage behind which the young woman is confined.
Tags are a recurring motif in Guild’s paintings, which combine trompe l’oeil details of paper and ribbon with intimate details of art historical pieces. In addition to the reference to shipping, they’re also evocative of labels used to identify and organize objects into place.
Guild is interested in the distortions and layered meanings of historic portraiture. Along with large-scale paintings, the artist also creates tender assemblies of smaller works in oval, gold frames, sometimes connected by gold-plated chains. Eyes are often encapsulated in their own frames, and it’s hard to escape the feeling of being watched.
These tiny, fragmented pieces also hone in on elegant hands, sensuous lips, jewelery, and fabrics, nodding to the tradition of painted miniatures. Often elaborately detailed for their size, these tiny portraits served as diplomatic gifts, keepsakes, tokens of love, and ways to commemorate people or events. They were a key element of introducing eligible men and women to prospective wives and husbands, and in aristocratic circles, social climbing was a not-so-hidden goal. Before photography, in the courtship scene, they were a kind of profile picture.
If you enjoy this work, you may also like Robyn Rich’s miniature eye pieces derived from Georgian portraits or the eccentric paintings of Volker Hermes, alongside whom Guild recently exhibited at James Freeman Gallery. See more on Guild’s work on Instagram.
