I spent the next couple of days on the computer adding stuff to the original image in Photoshop. Maria Theresa seems to have liked dogs, chocolate, gambling, card games, and playing with her pet dwarfs... She was eventually married to her double first cousin King Louis XIV of France by her father the King of Spain Philip IV for political reasons. Talk of inbreeding... After the marriage ceremony, Louis wanted to consummate the marriage as quickly as possible. However the new queen was granted by her mother in law (and aunt) the privilege that the consummation would be private, and not public as was the custom. Notice in the background a miniature version of the gigantic "Globes du Roi Soleil" that I saw at the Bibliotèque Nationale on my last stay in Paris.
She put up graciously with all her husband mistresses, and upon her death at the age of 44, the King said: "This is the first trouble which she has given me".
It has been suggested that she was the unnamed "great princess" who, according to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, originally said "Let them eat cake" (and not Marie Antoinette of Austria almost a century later).
Velasquez Portrait of Maria Theresa of Spain with two watches.
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