#aristocracy

The man in it was a rich young aristocrat with a habit of ordering paintings of himself — this was one of several he commissioned from the same painter, going by the museum's own notes. His father, I gather, had been a heavyweight in French law and politics, so the family was well used to being looked at.

Painted around the time she married into the family of Spain's chief minister, from what I can find — the sort of match that was half business, and the portrait was part of announcing it. The clothes are French, which is what you wore in Madrid if you could afford to.