Diego Velázquez

:This article pertains to the artist. For the conquistador who invaded Cuba in 1511, see Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar.

Velázquez's Italian period

It is canonical to divide the artistic career of Velázquez by his two visits to Italy, with his second grouping of works following the first visit and his third grouping following the second visit. This somewhat arbitrary division may be accepted though it will not always apply, because, as is usual in the case of many painters, his styles at times overlap each other. Velázquez rarely signed his pictures, and the royal archives give the dates of only his most important works. Internal evidence and history pertaining to his portraits supply the rest to a certain extent.

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First visit to Italy

In 1629 Philip gave Velázquez permission to carry out his desire of visiting Italy, without loss of salary, making him a present of 400 ducats to which Olivares added 200. He sailed from Barcelona in August in the company of the Marqués de Spinola, the conqueror of Breda, then on his way to take command of the Spanish troops at Milan. It was during this voyage that Velázquez must have heard the details of the surrender of Breda from the lips of the victor, and he must have sketched his fine head, known to us also by the portrait by Van Dyck.

Related Topics:
Italy - Barcelona - Marqués de Spinola - Breda - Milan - Van Dyck

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In Venice Velázquez made copies of Tintoretto's Crucifixion and Last Supper which he sent to the king, and in Rome he copied Michelangelo and Raphael, lodging in the Villa Medici till fever compelled him to retire into the city. Here he painted the La fragua de Vulcano (1630, The Forge of Vulcan; no. 1171 of the Museo del Prado), in which Apollo narrates to the astonished Vulcan, a village blacksmith, the news of the infidelity of Venus, while four others listen to the scandal. The mythological treatment is similar to that of The Feast of Bacchus: it is intimately realistic and innately Spanish, giving a picture of the interior of a smithy of Andalusia, with Apollo inserted to make the story tell. The conception is commonplace, yet the impression it produces is from the vividness of the representation and the power of expression. The modeling of the half-naked figures is extremely detailed. Altogether, this picture is much superior to his other work painted at the same time, La túnica de José (1630, English: Joseph's Bloody Coat), which now hangs in the Escorial. Both of these works are evidently painted from the same models. Curiously absent from both of these works, however, is the influence of the Italians.

Related Topics:
Venice - Tintoretto - Rome - Michelangelo - Apollo - Vulcan - Blacksmith - Venus - Escorial

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In Rome Velázquez also painted two beautiful landscapes of the gardens of the Villa Medici. Landscape was uncommon in Spanish art, but Velázquez showed how capable he was in this branch as well. The silvery views of Aranjuez, which at one time passed under his name, are now considered to be the work of his pupil and son-in-law Mazo. After a visit to Naples in 1631, where he worked with his countryman José Ribera and painted a charming portrait of the Infanta Maria, sister of Philip, Velázquez returned early in the year to Madrid.

Related Topics:
Aranjuez - Naples - José Ribera

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Return to Madrid (middle period)

Velázquez then painted the first of many portraits of the young prince and heir to the Spanish throne, Don Baltasar Carlos, looking dignified and lordly even in his childhood, in the dress of a field marshal on his prancing steed. The scene is in the riding school of the palace, the king and queen looking on from a balcony, while Olivares is in attendance as master of the horse to the prince. Don Baltasar died in 1646 at the age of seventeen, so, judging by his age in the portrait, it must have been painted in about 1641.

Related Topics:
Baltasar Carlos - Riding school

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The powerful minister Olivares was the early and constant patron of the painter. His impassive, saturnine face is familiar to us from the many portraits painted by Velázquez. Two are notable; one is a full-length, stately and dignified, in which he wears the green cross of Alcantara and holds a wand, the badge of his office as master of the horse, the other, a great equestrian portrait in which he is flatteringly represented as a field marshal during action. In these portraits Velázquez has well repaid the debt of gratitude which he owed to his first patron, whom Velázquez stood by during Olivares's fall from power, thus exposing himself to the great risk of the anger of the jealous Philip. The king, however, showed no sign of malice towards his favorite painter.

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The sculptor Montafles modeled a statue of one of Velázquez's equestrian portraits of the king, painted in 1636, which was cast in bronze by the Florentine sculptor Tacca and which now stands in the Plaza del Oriente at Madrid. The original of this portrait no longer exists, but several others do. Velázquez, in this and in all his portraits of the king, depicts Philip wearing the golilla, a stiff linen collar projecting at right angles from the neck. It was invented by the king, who was so proud of it that he celebrated it by a festival followed by a procession to the church to thank God for the blessing. The golilla was thus the height of fashion and appears in most of the male portraits of the period.

Related Topics:
Montafles - Florentine - Tacca - Plaza del Oriente

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Velázquez was in constant and close attendance on Philip, accompanying him in his journeys to Aragon in 1642 and 1644, and was doubtless present with him when he entered Lerida as a conqueror. It was then that he painted a great equestrian portrait in which the king is represented as a great commander leading his troops—a role which Philip never played except in pageantry. All is full of animation except the stolid face of the king. It hangs as a pendant to the great Olivares portrait—fit rivals of the neighboring Charles V by Titian, which inspired Velázquez to excel himself, and both remarkable for their silvery tone and their feeling of open air.

Related Topics:
Aragon - Lerida - Titian

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Velázquez's portraiture

Besides the forty portraits of Philip by Velázquez, he painted portraits of other members of the royal family: Philip's first wife, Isabella of Bourbon, and her children, especially her eldest son, Don Baltasar Carlos, of whom there is a beautiful full-length in a private room at Buckingham Palace. Cavaliers, soldiers, churchmen and poets of the court, as, for example, the Quevedo at Apsley House, sat to the painter and, even if forgotten by history, will live on his canvas.

Related Topics:
Isabella of Bourbon - Buckingham Palace - Apsley House

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The Spaniards have always been cautious to commit to canvas the portraits of their beautiful women. Queens and infants may be painted and exhibited, but ladies rarely. One wonders who the beautiful woman can be who adorns the Wallace collection, a brunette so unlike the usual fair-haired female sitters to Velázquez. This picture is one of the ornaments of the Wallace collection. But, if few ladies of the court of Philip have been depicted, Velázquez painted several of his buffoons and dwarfs. Even these deformed or half-witted creatures attract sympathy in the portraits by Velázquez, who treats them gently and kindly, as in El Primo (1644, English: The Favorite), whose intelligent face and huge folio with ink-bottle and pen by his side show him to be a wiser and better-educated man than many of the gallants of the court. Pablo de Valladolid (1635, English: Paul of Valladolid), a buffoon evidently acting a part, and El Bobo de Coria (1639, English: The Buffoon of Coria) belong to this middle period.

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The greatest of the religious paintings by Velázquez also belongs to this middle period, the Cristo Crucificado (1632, English: Christ on the Cross). It is a work of tremendous originality, depicting Christ immediately after death. The Savior's head hangs on his breast and a mass of dark tangled hair conceals part of the face. The figure stands absolutely alone. The picture was lengthened to suit its place in an oratory, but this addition has since been removed.

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Velázquez's son-in-law Mazo had succeeded him as usher in 1634, and Mazo himself had received a steady promotion in the royal household. Mazo received a pension of 500 ducats in 1640, increased to 700 in 1648, for portraits painted and to be painted, and was appointed inspector of works in the palace in 1647.

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Philip now entrusted Velázquez with carrying out a design on which he had long set his heart: the founding of an academy of art in Spain. Rich in pictures, Spain was weak in statuary, and Velázquez was commissioned once again to proceed to Italy to make purchases.

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Second Visit to Italy

Accompanied by his faithful slave Pareja, whom he taught to be a good painter, Velázquez sailed from Málaga in 1649, landing at Genoa, and proceeded from Milan to Venice, buying paintings of Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese as he went. At Modena he was received with much favor by the duke, and here he painted the portrait of the duke at the Modena gallery and two portraits which now adorn the Dresden gallery, for these paintings came from the Modena sale of 1746.

Related Topics:
Málaga - Genoa - Titian - Tintoretto - Veronese - Modena - Dresden

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Those works presage the advent of the painter's third and latest manner, a noble example of which is the great portrait of Pope Innocent X in the Doria Pamphilj Gallery in Rome, where Velázquez now proceeded. There he was received with marked favor by the Pope, who presented him with a medal and golden chain. Velázquez took a copy of the portrait—which Sir Joshua Reynolds thought was the finest picture in Rome—with him to Spain. Several copies of it exist in different galleries, some of them possibly studies for the original or replicas painted for Philip. Velázquez had in this work now reached the manera abreviada, a term coined by contemporary Spaniards for this bolder, sharper style. The portrait shows such ruthlessness in Innocent's expression that some in the Vatican feared that Velázquez would meet with the Pope's displeasure, but Innocent was well pleased with the work, hanging it in his official visitor's waiting room. Centuries later, the painter Francis Bacon would create several variations on Velázquez's painting—"that Velázquez is one of the great paintings of the world, of course - well, I was very obsessed by that Velázquez and, of course, I made a great mistake…"—Figure with Meat (1954).

Related Topics:
Pope Innocent X - Doria Pamphilj Gallery - Pope - Joshua Reynolds - Vatican - Francis Bacon - Figure with Meat

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In 1650 in Rome Velázquez also painted a portrait of his servant, Juan de Pareja, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. This portrait procured his election into the Academy of St. Luke. Purportedly Velázquez created this portrait as a "warm-up" of his skills before his portrait of the Pope. It captures in great detail Pareja's countenance and his somewhat worn and patched clothing with an impressive economy of brushwork; it is one of his best known pieces of portraiture.

Related Topics:
Metropolitan Museum of Art - New York City - Academy of St. Luke

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