Extravagant palaces, shiny jewels, intricate hairstyles, tight set-up corsets, gorgeous skirts... This was the standard of the royal family in Europe's heyday, from west to east, different dynasties and families alternately prospered and declined, giving the European continent non-stop vitality and war.
I. The Spanish Habsburg Dynasty – guardians of noble blue blood
"Others suffer from war, but Ru and others are fortunate to marry!" When the Habsburgs extended their tentacles to Spain, this phrase became a family discipline and a curse that the two-headed eagle as its family crest could not escape.
The Habsburg dynasty was the most extensive royal family in European history, and the Holy Roman Empire, the Spanish Empire, the Austrian Empire, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were all once the places of its rule. By marriage and bloodline, three branches have emerged in history, the most famous being the Austrian Habsburgs and the Spanish Habsburgs. The "Princess Sissi" we are most familiar with is Queen Elizabeth, who married into the Austrian Habsburgs.
With this portrait, let's first understand the relatively simple Spanish Habsburg dynasty.
The painting was created by the court painter Velázquez, one of the most famous painters in Spain, who not only painted well, but also participated in the management of court affairs. The cute-looking child in the painting is Prince PhilipPero of the Habsburg dynasty of Spain, but why is the prince wearing a girl's flower skirt?
The so-called "blue blood", which refers to the veins that faintly show a little blue through the white skin, represents the different bloodlines of northerners and southerners, and is also a symbol of the so-called honor of the ruling class. Guarding the "noble blue blood" was the primary business of the Spanish Habsburgs, and royal marriage could only be selected from princesses of noble blood, but at that time there was no intermarriage between Catholicism and Protestantism, and the choice was very small. There were fewer and fewer bride candidates, and from Carlos I onwards he began to marry cousins who were closely related by blood. In order to give birth to an heir, his son Philip II married four wives, the last of whom was his niece. This family has also tried to introduce new bloodlines, but the heirs are flowing with pure "blue blood". The result of the marriage of close relatives is that it is difficult to produce offspring, and even if they survive, they are in good health. At that time, the survival rate of girls was significantly higher than that of boys, and in order to blind the eyes of the "God of Death", they dressed the young Prince Prospero in girl's clothes, carrying a bell to exorcise evil spirits and a herb sac for the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, and everyone hoped that he would grow up and successfully inherit the throne.
But in the picture after the painter's beautification, the little prince has a miserable complexion, empty eyes, and a gorgeous chair in his hand, and this child lacks the vitality of a young child. Because of the marriage of close relatives, Philip IV's children died one after another, and the only heir at that time did not escape the fate of premature death, and 2 years after the completion of this painting, the 4-year-old little prince also died.
Before the birth of Prince Philip the Younger, both the king and the nation had no hope of a male heir, and in order to continue the dynasty, the king hoped that Princess Margaret would inherit the Kingdom of Spain without the birth of other heirs. Velázquez created the most outstanding work of his artistic career for the little princess, in which the princess twists her face to the side with her cheeks, the maid next to her coaxes her, and in the mirror in the middle of the picture are her beloved parents, then King Philip IV and Queen of Spain. After the birth of Prince Prospero, the Queen's problems vanished, but when the Prince died at the age of 4, the issue was raised again. When Princess Margaret was 10 years old, Carlos II, the "son of miracles", was born. At the age of 15, the little princess, like her mother, traveled to Austria to marry her uncle, and the "spell of blue blood" still smirked at the Spanish Habsburg dynasty.
Portraits of Carlos II, the last prince of the Habsburgs in Spain, were painted by Juan Carreno de Miranda, the last court painter of this dynasty. The prince was known as the "child of miracles" when he was born, and it did not take long to become the "son of the devil", and he was not weaned until the age of 3, could not stand, was physically and mentally fragile, had low intelligence, and was extremely ugly in appearance. (The painter glorified the prince, you can go and search for other portraits to see the truth) Philip IV was very disgusted with the child. However, at the age of 60, Philip IV died with anxiety about his son and the kingdom. The 4-year-old Carlos II succeeded to the throne by his mother regent. The faltering Kingdom of Spain awaited the birth of a new heir, but Carlos II was infertile and miraculously lived to be 39 years old before leaving this world, ending the Spanish Habsburg "blue-blooded" bloodline that lasted for 185 years, and the great powers began a war over the Spanish succession to the throne for more than a decade.
The throne of Tsarist Russia – an angry fighting people
The first Tsar in Russian history was Ivan IV, also known as Ivan the Terrible. Legend has it that when he was born, the sky was lightning and thunder, and the late ruler was grumpy, and when he did not agree, he picked up the noble scepter in his hand and carried out internal purges many times, which was very in line with the title of "Thunder Emperor". He conquered the Kazan Khanate, the Astrakhan Khanate, and forced the Siberian Khanate to submit. But after the death of his first wife, Anastasia, his sanity became increasingly dysfunctional. It is said that the nobles did not want to see the descendants of the Romanov dynasty to which Anastasia belonged to inherit the throne and poisoned her.
This painting is the work of the famous Russian painter Repin, and the title of the painting is Ivan the Terrible Killing. The old man with wide-eyed fear in the picture is Ivan the Terrible, and the blood-stained man in his arms is his son, the only heir to the throne, the precious crown prince. Although the Thunder Emperor clutched his son's bleeding head, it was too late. It is said that the cause was that the pregnant Crown Princess was unwell and attended the event in civilian clothes, and the Thunder Emperor was furious and beat her with his scepter, resulting in her miscarriage. The son argues with his father, although the Thunder Emperor regrets it, but the hysterical character makes him lose his temper and raise his scepter... By the time he regained consciousness, his son was already lying in front of him.
The Thunder Emperor was dominated by rage, not only hurting others, but also deeply hurting himself. Ivan IV's six children consisted only of his eldest son (crown prince) and younger brother Fyodor, but Fyodor had intellectual problems and was not capable of producing heirs, and the Regent himself buried the Rurik dynasty. Ironically, after several twists and turns, Russia was ruled for a long time by the Romanov dynasty, the mother of the poisoned Anastasia.
About a hundred years after Ivan the Terrible, the Romanov siblings fought a battle for power.
The painting is also from Repin, Princess Sophia. Compared with other royal families in Europe, the Russian royal family has encountered many marriage problems. Other European royal families praised themselves as noble royals, and the Russian royals from remote areas were in their eyes "dirt buns from the countryside", the Tsar could not marry European princesses, the European royal family did not look up to the daughters of the Tsar, and the Tsar felt that it was very dishonorable to marry their daughters to their courtiers, and these princesses had only two ways, either to die alone in the palace, or to become nuns. Nor can a noble status give them happiness.
One of the disobedient princesses was Sophia, the daughter of Alexei, the second Tsar of the Romanov family, who had two wives, and whose family was a powerful nobleman in the country, and after his death, the two sides began a power struggle.
The winner was peter the son of the second wife (the later Peter the Great), and the half-sister did not waste her years and actively pursued higher education. She ordered the lancers to invade the Kremlin, where the new Tsar Peter and his mother lived, and sacrificed Peter's supporters in blood. Peter, who was only 10 years old at the time, was exiled. He made his intellectually inferior brother Ivan emperor, regent Sophia, and completely held real power. The failure of two expeditions to Crimea during her administration lost her popularity, and civil forces began to support Peter's return to the throne. Sophia again sent out a squad of gunmen, but failed. Peter did not kill the sister, but imprisoned her in the monastery.
Eight years later, Peter I thought he had plucked Princess Sophia's minions and traveled to Europe. During the trip, he heard of the uprising of the Moscow gun brigade, and he returned home in anger. Although the revolt was suppressed, the enraged Peter I reopened the investigation, sentencing nearly 1,500 people.
In the painting, Princess Sophia glares angrily at the front, and the black-clad maid behind her eyes show fear, but Sophia has no fear on her body, and through the canvas she can feel the raging anger burning throughout the room, eager to burn anyone who steps into this room. Hanging outside the window behind her was the corpse of the gunners' captain, and it was Peter who reminded her at all times, "Dare to rebel again, your fate is the same as his!" ”
After this incident, Sophia was not executed, but was imprisoned in the deepest part of the monastery, spent the last fifteen years under the watchful eye of hundreds of soldiers, and died in anger.
Each royal portrait is rich in stories, dressed in ornate clothes and worshipped by courtiers, but living sympathetic lives before power. Unable to decide the object of marriage, under the purpose of marriage, the woman marries to the sinister court in a foreign country, in the era of low medical care, in order to give birth to an heir, constantly passing by the side of the god of death, once the situation changes, what about the throne?
Kyoko Nakano popularized history and myths and legends through famous paintings, this set of books 1, 2, 3 can be read in detail, the fourth book is to integrate the NHK program, and the previous three have a lot of repetition, but also added a lot of details, just look at the fourth book is also OK. The interpretation of famous paintings is very subjective, for example, the views of the painters Schiller, Kogu and Nakano are not very consistent, perhaps Nakano from the perspective of women, to Schiller marked the label of "negative scumbag"; Xiao Gu mainly from the painter's brushstrokes and style, anecdotes are just a tune. The benevolent see the wise.
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