1721 Copper Engraving Portrait Isabella Clara Eugenia Austria Spanish EUM1

This is an original 1721 black and white copper engraving of "Isabella Clara Eugenia, Königs Philippi II, Tochter, Alberti Ertz Hertzogs von Österreich Gemahlin." This is a portrait of Isabella Clara Eugenia of Austria, daughter of Philip II of Spain and his third wife Elisabeth of Valois, Infanta of Spain and Portugal, wife of Albert VII, Archduke of Austria with whom she jointly reigned over the Spainish Netherlands in the Low Countries and the north of France. She and her husband employed the visual arts to further their political agenda to all Flemish social classes, relying upon the Baroque style popularized in the wake of the Catholic Reformation. Isabella and Albert VII thus stimulated the growth of the Flemish Baroque, becoming patrons of Peter Paul Rubens, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Coebergher, the De Nole family, and the Van Veens, ushering in the beginning of a Golden Age in the Southern Netherlands and transforming their Court at Brussels into one of the foremost poli