125 - [Anne of Austria (Queen’s Household)].

[Anne of Austria (Queen’s Household)]. P.S. by her chambermaid Stéphanie de Villaguiran, Paris, December 31, 1619, 1 p., small oblong in-4, in brown ink on parchment. Receipt for 1,095 livres for “the food and upkeep of the two little dwarfs.” Doña Estefanía de Villaquirán (or Stefanía Villaguiran) was the chief lady-in-waiting and governess to Anne of Austria, the Infanta of Spain who became Queen of France. She accompanied her to the French court after her marriage to Louis XIII in 1615. As a close confidante, she played a central role in the queen’s Spanish entourage. Historians note, in particular, that it was in her presence that the Spanish ambassador, Monteleón, read to the queen the personal letters from her father, King Philip III of Spain. This curious receipt also attests to a practice that was particularly widespread at the court of the Spanish Habsburgs in the 16th and 17th centuries: the presence among sovereigns and princes of small-statured individuals, who were employed within the Royal Household itself as companions, attendants, or entertainers. Anne of Austria thus appears to have introduced this Spanish custom into her French entourage. This predilection of the Spanish court was to find its most famous illustration a few decades later in the work of Velázquez, who devoted several portraits to the dwarfs and jesters of Philip IV. In “Las Meninas” (1656), two of them, María Bárbola and Nicolasito Pertusato, appear in the foreground alongside the Infanta Margarita Teresa, a striking testament to the unique place these figures occupied in the private life of the Spanish royal family.