This production of Velasquez was only one of many portraits of this lovely princess; for she was by all acknowledged to be the very star of the Court. She shared the taste of her husband, whilst his young brothers, both early instructed in drawing, warmly joined in the King’s pursuits, not only in the arts, but in literature. The elder, Don Carlos, beloved, as has been stated, by the Spaniards for his dark complexion, was supposed to have excited the jealousy of Olivares by his talents--he died in 1626: the second, the Boy-Cardinal, who assumed the Roman purple and the mitre of an archbishop, was the able pupil in painting of Vincencio Carducho, and became the most intellectual of the Spanish Princes that had appeared since Charles V. He set the fashion of those half-dramatic, half-musical pieces, which were called in Spain, _Zarzuelas_.[143] The boy--whom we have seen joining heart and soul, in his purple robe, and beneath his mitre, in court revels, given in honour of Charles I., was, at that very time, a student in philosophy and mathematics; and when at the age of twenty-two he was sent to govern Flanders, and henceforth to spend the brief span of life allotted to him in camps and councils--was still, to the last, the patron of Velasquez and Rubens.[144] Footnote 143: From the name of his country-seat. Footnote 144: The infant Cardinal, the conqueror of Nordlingen, died in 1641. Olivares the Magnificent, as he was often called, cultivated the fine arts as a means of diverting the young monarch from his own abuse of power, and the consequent discontents which marked his administration. He possessed the most magnificent library in Europe, abounding in rare manuscripts, and, domesticated in this house as chaplain, Lope de Vega passed his old age. Quevedo, Pachecho, and many others, owed much to the patronage of Olivares--a protection which they paid back in compliments, and, like Lord Halifax, he was “fed with dedications.” Olivares was one of the first sitters to Velasquez; he was the patron of Murillo, and, in the downfall of this minister, these two painters did not desert their early friend, but alone clung to him in his misfortunes.