demolina: → 21 May 1527: the birth of Philip II of Spain To historians he
demolina: → 21 May 1527: the birth of Philip II of Spain To historians he is an enigma: he receives us as he did his ambassadors, with the utmost cortesy, listening to us, replying in a low and often unintelligible voice. Never speaking of himself at all. For three whole days just before he died, he confessed the errors of his lifetime. But who could truly imagine these errors, numbered before the tribunal of a conscience whose judgements may or may not have been just, as it searched the recesses of a long life? Here lies one of the great mysteries of his life, the shadow which if we are truthful we must leave across his portrait. Or rather his many portraits. What man does not change in the course of his life? And Philip’s life was a long and disturbed one, from the painting by Titian of the prince in his twentieth year to the terrible and moving portrait by Pantoja de la Cruz which show us the king at the end of his reign, the shadow of what he once had been. — Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world in the age of Philip II -- source link
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