Prince Balthasar Charles

This reinterpretation of the Portrait of Prince Balthasar Charles (Príncipe Baltasar Carlos) as a Hunter painted by Diego Velázquez from 1635–1636 comes from the series Amusements in the Prado (Entretenimientos en el Prado) which Pablo Serrano created as an homage to the art by the Spanish grand masters. In 1962, after visiting the Museo del Prado, the sculptor decided to bring paintings by the grand masters—including Goya, Velázquez, Titian, and El Greco—into the third dimension to amuse himself. He plays with materials to create his own expressionist versions of the most famous figures in Spanish art history. When he returned to the series in 1974, as well as repeating Equestrian Portrait of Prince Balthasar Charles, which he had already produced a first version of in 1962, he would add this work. It shows the same figure holding a hunting rifle. He uses clay to model the figure with great plasticity which was later cast in bronze, demonstrating his command of figurative expressionist language with the same level of success as abstract radicalism.