Don Juan of Austria in His Gallery in Brussels, Surrounded by His Gentlemen
After David Teniers the Younger, c. 1656–1659
Don Juan in Brussels — An Alternative Court (1656–1659)
In 1656, Don Juan José of Austria (1629–1679), the acknowledged illegitimate son of King Philip IV of Spain, was appointed Governor-General of the Spanish Netherlands. At the age of 27, this seasoned military leader—victorious in Naples in 1647—was also a princely figure of a peculiar sort: although legitimized and afforded considerable authority, he remained on the margins of dynastic power, a position that afforded him a measure of independence.
During his three-year mandate in Brussels (1656–1659), he took up residence at the Coudenberg Palace, in a city still resonating with the faded splendor of the Archdukes Albert and Isabella. While required to perform ceremonial duties, contemporaries noted that Don Juan preferred to host more intimate and informal gatherings, outside the rigid structures of Spanish court protocol.
He surrounded himself with trusted advisors, secretaries, and officers of his household, many of them young men from the Castilian or Flemish nobility, several of whom appeared to enjoy a particular closeness with him. Various chroniclers of the time—notably the Count of Fuentes, ambassador in Vienna, and later the memoirist Saint-Simon—remarked on the marked favoritism extended to these companions. One name frequently mentioned is Luis Méndez de Haro y Guzmán, nephew of the Count-Duke of Olivares, who often traveled with Don Juan and remained a loyal member of his inner circle.
In Brussels, Don Juan showed a keen personal interest in the arts, in keeping with the Habsburg tradition. He commissioned works, visited the collections of the Arenberg family and possibly that of David Teniers the Younger, then court painter and curator for Archduke Leopold Wilhelm. His private cabinet was said to contain Italian and Flemish paintings, with a distinct preference for mythological and allegorical subjects—especially those celebrating virtue, devotion, or tragic heroism, where the idealized male body often held a central place. His collection reportedly included representations of Ganymede, Endymion, and Saint Sebastian—ambiguous figures much prized in the Baroque visual culture.
While no known painting by Teniers depicts Don Juan in a gallery setting, it is historically plausible that such a composition—modeled on his famous depictions of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm’s gallery—could have been imagined or even requested. In such a scene, Don Juan might appear standing in an elegant interior, in the presence of young gentlemen admiring artworks, surrounded by depictions of legendary and historical men bound by affection, desire, or unspoken alliance, subtly echoing the atmosphere of idealized companionship.
Such a never realized artwork could have captured the delicate tension between public authority and private intimacy that Don Juan cultivated. In a society where the private lives of the powerful were rigorously policed, courtly codes and aesthetics often served as a discreet veil for intimacies once kept off the record.
Historical Note
No contemporary source explicitly describes Don Juan of Austria as having engaged in homosexual relationships. However, his lifelong celibacy, the total absence of documented relationships with women, the longstanding closeness with certain male favorites, and the suggestions of insufficient masculinity found in hostile accounts (especially after 1660) have led some modern scholars to interpret his life through a queer historical lens—as one marked by sublimation, discretion, and symbolic expression through art, loyalty, and aesthetics.
The Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Painting Gallery in Brussels David Teniers le Jeune, c.1647–1651