This imposing and regal full-length portrait is characteristic of the courtly Spanish style popularized by Juan Pantoja de la Cruz and his contemporaries. Pantoja de la Cruz worked for the Spanish royal family from about 1585 onwards, and on Philip III's accession to the throne in 1598 became official portrait painter to the court. His style, with its restrained demeanor and close attention to pattern and detail, was formed upon that of his mentor, Alonso Sanchez Coello, in whose workshop he was an oficial and on many of whose late works he certainly collaborated. Coello in turn spent time in Flanders where he encountered Antonius Mor, and from Mor both he and Pantojoa de la Cruz absorbed a tight, linear, and naturalistic style, which is exemplified in the present portrait. Pantoja de la Cruz's importance in the lineage of court portraiture is attested to by the number of portraits he executed of Margaret of Austria, Queen of Spain, the most important of which are probably those of 1604 (Houston, Museum of Fine Arts), 1605 (London, Royal Collection, Buckingham Palace) and 1606 (Madrid, Prado), all painted in Valladolid, where the court was established between 1601 and 1606.

Fig. 1)Venetian Painter, Portrait of Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alba, Galleria Borghese, Rome.

This subject of this swagger portrait has traditionally been identified as Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y Pimentel (1507–1582), third Duke of Alba, a Spanish nobleman, diplomat, general, viceroy of Naples and Portugal, and governor of Milan and the Netherlands. The likeness relates to a 1549 three-quarter length portrait of the Duke of Alba in the Hispanic Society Museum and Library (acc. no. A105). That work features different armor and overall design to the present example but offers a key link from which to understand the present example. An even closer likeness and comparison is the portrait which resides in the Galleria Borghese (fig. 1). That work, of seemingly less refined quality and condition to the present example, is of bust length and traditionally recognized as by an anonymous Venetian artist. It has indeed been suggested that the author of this full-length portrait may be north Italian, though it's inspiration and tone originate in the Spanish Hapsburg court.