Art and Architecture (SP3055)
El Alcázar
The Alcazar stood on the present site of the Palacio de Oriente, on the high bluff overlooking the valley of the Manzanares. It had been the original Moorish fortress, and the site, La Almudena, the oldest in Madrid. The steep road up from the valley corresponds to today's Calle de Segovia. Carlos V and Philip II both renovated the Alcazar, though it was notoriously gloomy. For further detail click
In this architect's plan by Philip's architect, Juan Gómez de Mora, you clearly see the two central patios of the Alcázar, which were centres of commerce. At the foot of the plan, we are in the esplanade of La Almudena. Velázquez's studio, La Galería del cuarto bajo del Príncipe, is marked in red and you can count the seven window embrasures, beginning from the left of the square tower at the very corner. In the Meninas, the light comes in through five of these.
La Galería del cuarto bajo del Príncipe
had
been the rooms assigned in the Alcázar to Philip's son and
heir, Baltasar Carlos. Here, in the portrait by Velázquez, we
see Baltasar as a child, groomed to follow his father's footsteps,
for one of Philip's favourite pastimes was hunting. Baltasar
Carlos accompanied his father to Zaragoza in the campaign against
the French occupation of Catalonia and there, to the deep sorrow
of his father, his gifted son caught a fever and died. Philip
thereafter married the bride intended for Baltasar Carlos, and it
is she who appears in the mirror along with her husband in the
Las Meninas.
Waite, in his article, makes considerable play on the absent figure in the room which must still have held memories of its former royal occupant.