1599-1660 • Spanish • Painter • Baroque
"Like a bee, he carefully selected what suited his needs and would benefit posterity." - Antonio Palomino, 1724
While Spain was at the peak of its political and economic power during the 16th century, artists from Italy and the Netherlands were brought to the Spanish court. The great age of Spanish painting came in the next century, during the reign of Philip IV (1621-65), whose court painter was Velazquez. He worked mainly on portraits of the royal family; included in t his category is Las Meninas (The Maids of Honor;1656), which another, contemporary painter, GIORDANO, called a "Theology of Painting." The meaning of this phrase is that every significant consideration in the discipline of painting is realized to perfection here: It combines portraiture; it is NARRATIVE; and it treats of tradition of painting, the artist's role, concepts of vision and reflection, illumination, PERSPECTIVE, and COLOR, to mention only some of its concerns . Regarding technique, "it seems as if the hand played no part in its execution, but that it was painted by the will alone," wrote MENGS 100 years later. Very few drawings by Velazquez exist, and it is believed that he painted directly onto the canvas. His broad and fluid brushstroke was to have a profound effect on succeeding artists, as did the natural appearance he gave his subjects, his EQUESTRIAN portraits, and the collection of unconventional people, especially dwarfs, who were kept around for the amusement of the court. The importance of Velazquez to the BAROQUE period can hardly be exaggerated.
The Spanish painter and writer on art Antonio Palomino (1655-1726), who is quoted above, revered Velazquez above all other artists. Velazquez's profound insight into human character is expressed in two portraits that are diametrically opposed in regard to their subjects. He painted his employee, traveling companion, and fellow artist, Juan de Pareja (c. 1649-50), in Rome while awaiting, and limbering up for, his call to paint Pope Innocent X (c. 1650-51). The first-dark-skinned, dark-eyed, and dressed in brown and green with a wide, lacy white collar-expresses in the portrait a disarming and monumental combination of humility and nobility. The pope, in a shimmering red satin hat and cape over a lacy white vestment, is as hard-edged, tense, and powerful as Pareja is gentle, relaxed, and deferential. The range of Velazquez's influence is similarly diverse: The American painter EAKINS did not undertake painting portraits until after he studied Velazquez in Madrid; the British painter BACON was moved to paint Study after Veldzquez's Pope Innocent X (1953), which extenuates the original image to a terrifying conclusion.
There is a very different sense in which the impact of Velazquez manifested itself during the 20th century. In 1914, to draw attention to the suffragists who were incarcerated in Holloway prison for their activities in pursuit of the vote for women, Mary Richardson went to the National Gallery in London and severely vandalized Velazquez's Rokeby Venus (c.1651), a naked, reclining woman seen from the back, her form undulating in curves of exceptional beauty. When she was interviewed by a newspaper some 40 years later, the woman, who was called Mary the Slasher, said, "I didn't like the way men visitors gaped at it all day long."