VELÁZQUEZ, Diego Rodriguez de Silva y

During the 1630s and 1640s Vel�zquez painted a series of portraits of the courtdwarfs, playmates of the royal children, for they interested him as character studies.

For his pictures of the fools and dwarfs Vel�zquez often chose the format of a rectangle coming down close to the head, within which the figures crouch as if in a compact, closely circumscribed world; an example is the portrait the Dwarf Francisco Lezcano, painted by Vel�zquez around 1643-1645 as a retarded boy of fifteen. It was a burlesque piece that formed part of the decoration of the Torre de la Parada. The feeble-minded dwarf, dressed in green, is lovingly caressing the playing cards he holds. His bloated, over-large features are almost monumental, and a curious beauty plays over the face of the hydrocephalic dwarf.

Seventeenth-century Spanish horses, bred from crosses with Arab stallions, were famous for their proud bearing and temperamental beauty. Vel�zquez had the opportunity of observing them daily in the royal stables or when the king put them through their paces.

It is assumed by critics that the painting is a self-portrait.

One of his series of unforgettable portraits showing great psychological acuity, and among the few works to be dated and signed by the young artist, is Mother Jer�nima de la Fuente. According to the long inscription on the lower part, the Abbess departed from Seville to the Philippine Islands in 1620 to establish a cloister there. The realistic style of the painting reflects the influence of Francisco Herrera the Elder and Francisco Pacheco.

The elderly nun’s gaze is keen and slightly melancholic, as if prepared for any sacrifice. She holds a large crucifix in her right hand and a book in her left hand.

The satirical tradition had spread throughout Europe via the humanists, and Vel�zquez’s knowledge of it is evident in his use of ideal types in portraits of the Cynic philosopher Menippus and the Greek composer of animal fables Aesop, possibly painted for the hunting lodge Torre de la Parada, near the Buen Retiro Palace. Both figures are shown full length and would have made suitable counterparts to the pictures of Democritus and Heraclitus by Rubens in the Torre de la Parada. It was here, too, that many of Vel�zquez’s portraits of court fools and dwarfs were hung.

Aesop’s face with its flattened nose was probably not - as is commonly thought - painted after a man of the people (even if the painting did attempt to show a simple man whose features were marked by toil, and who therefore represented the Cynic ideal of the modesty and wisdom of the people). The portrait seems rather more reminiscent of Giovanni Battista della Porta’s physiognomic parallels between various types of human faces and the heads of animals associated with certain temperaments. Vel�zquez gave Aesop’s face the fleshy features of the human “ox-head type” described in the physiognomical doctrines of della Porta, published in 1586, which calls Aesop’s animal fables to mind.

Of greater importance, however, are the eyes: one almost feels that in the landscape of Aesop’s face they are all that is left of the grounding of the canvas. They are deep-seated and probing, turned on the observer with a slight touch of contempt. Like the eyes of many of Vel�zquez’s dwarfs and fools, their gaze is full of the irony that sees through convention. Aesop, who lived from about 620 to 560 BC, began life as a slave and died a violent death. In this picture his face, marked by suffering, shows the same simple dignity as that of the court jesters or country folk painted by Vel�zquez.

According to Plutarch, Aesop was a counsellor to the Lydian King Croesus (6th century). Vel�zquez was suggesting a parallel with the situation at the Spanish court. The two portraits of philosophers, together with the portraits of fools and dwarfs, were intended to warn the king not to lose touch with the common people and their wisdom.

This picture is also connected with Arachne, like the famous Las Hilanderas. It presents something of a problem: what is the dark-haired young woman pointing to on the empty panel in front of her? She may be either Arachne seen as the personification of painting, or a Sibyl or prophetess pointing to the future.

The Breakfast is among Vel�zquez’s earliest bodegones, painted shortly before the end of his apprenticeship, in 1617 or at the very beginning of 1618. It concentrates with particular intensity on the individual characterization of the men, who are shown half-length and three-quarter length, and they are of different ages. The frugality of their meal obviously does not impair their enjoyment of life. The composition presents a view from above of their expressive faces and hands, the tablecloth, and the physical materiality of the food and drink.

Vel�zquez did not paint lavish quantities of victuals, but the frugal diet of simple people: there is garlic on tables in his bodegones, with fish and eggs, black pudding, olives and aubergines, cheese, home-made wine and a few fruits, together with kitchen utensils such as a mortar, a bowl or a pottery jug. These Spartan still-lifes and the realistically depicted characters shown in such settings, people with an aura of grave silence even when they are painted in action, convey a sense of self-sufficiency that seems to emanate from the down-to-earth philosophy of the ordinary man in the street.

There is another version of this painting entitled Peasants at the Table in the Sz�pm�v�szeti M�zeum, Budapest.

Philip IV was a bold and enthusiastic huntsman, it was usual for the king to ride out with a small retinue in the extensive game preserves of the densely wooded Pardo. Emperor Charles V had built a watchtower on the way to the mountainous hunting grounds of the Sierra, as a place to stop and rest before the most strenuous stage of the journey. This tower was known as the Torre de la Parada, and Philip, who was particularly fond of it, extended it to make a comfortable hunting lodge. He was in haste to see it furnished, and commissioned Rubens to provide a large collection of new pictures on mythological subjects.

After 1638, when the building itself was completed, it was the task of Vel�zquez to decide how they should be hung, and to contribute a series of hunting portraits himself, to hang with other appropriate works already in existence and with pictures by Dutch masters. This project cost him a great deal of time and trouble, but it also won him increasing appreciation at court.

Vel�zquez’s three extant hunting portraits (Philip IV as a Hunter, Prince Baltasar Carlos as a Hunter, and Cardinal Infante Don Fernando as a Hunter) are life-size. Don Fernando, the king’s younger brother, despite his spiritual calling, did not hesitate to indulge his passion for hunting. In this painting, showing him with his gun at the ready, he looks even more of a huntsman than his relations. His expressive outline balances the silhouette of the cinnamon-coloured dog sitting in front of him, a figure once again illustrating the court painter’s skill in depicting animals. He pays them as much careful attention as he expends on human beings; while he is of course aware of the differences between animals and humans, he is also conscious of the dignity shared by all living creatures. The natural elegance of a horse’s head or the body of a dog, their fiery or faithful natures - few painters have captured the beauty and individuality of animals as unforgettably as Vel�zquez.

In this early work, Vel�zquez refers to the gospel according to St Luke, which tells of a visit by Christ to the house of Mary and Martha. While Mary sat at his feet to listen to his words, Martha busied herself with work in the kitchen; eventually, she came to him and said: “Lord, dost thou not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Bid her therefore that she help me.” To which Christ replied, “Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things; but one thing is needful: and Mary has chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.” (St Luke 10:40-42).

The composition of the painting, with a kitchen scene in the tradition of the “bodegones” taking up the foreground, while the scene involving Christ is presented as a view or a mirror image, is clearly influenced by the art of the Netherlands. Even the plump, ruddy-cheeked figure of Martha and the still-life arrangement of fish, garlic, eggs and paprika, recall examples of Northern European art. Moreover, this picture is charged with a strange sense of tension and restlessness. The events reflected in the mirror, bathed in a mild light and exuding an atmosphere peace and calm, are contrasted with the foreground image of loud and busy work. Through highlighting and formal diversity, the artist sets a scene that is clearly dissatisfactory to Martha. She is not concentrating on her work, but gazes full of yearning, on the verge of tears, and slightly angrily, as though she already realized that Mary had chosen the better part.

The Biblical scene in the background, bathed in a mild light and exuding an atmosphere peace and calm, are contrasted with the foreground image of loud and busy work.

This Crucifixion of unparalleled serenity and simplicity was completed when the artist returned from his journey to Italy.

It was customary at the courts of Europe during the seventeenth century for monarchs to keep dwarfs. Vel�zquez’s sympathy for the fools and dwarfs of the Spanish court is obvious: in the pathos and humane understanding demonstrated by the single portraits with which he (and he alone) paid tribute to them.

The subject of the painting is the Greek philosopher Democritus expressing his amusement at the world, which stands on the table in front of him in the shape of a globe. The man in the picture stands there smiling, shown half-length, turned to one side but with his face towards us. His right hand is placed on his hip, in an attitude setting off the heavy folds of a red cloak.

Democritus, who lived around 470-360 BC, taught that cheerful and moderate contentment was the way to happiness. European painting of the Renaissance and Baroque periods repeatedly portrayed him as the “laughing philosopher”, contrasting him with other intellectual types such as the pessimist, the stoic and the cynic.

It was customary at the courts of Europe during the seventeenth century for monarchs to keep dwarfs. Vel�zquez’s sympathy for the fools and dwarfs of the Spanish court is obvious: in the pathos and humane understanding demonstrated by the single portraits with which he (and he alone) paid tribute to them.

A particularly impressive portrait is Vel�zquez’s painting of the dwarf Don Diego de Acedo, alias El Primo (The Cousin), probably commissioned by the court and executed at Fraga in about 1644. (The dwarf was called El Primo because he boasted of being the relative of Vel�zquez.)

Like the midget Sebastian de Morra, who served in the retinue of the Infante Don Fernando and Prince Baltasar Carlos, El Primo is shown sitting, and is viewed slightly from below. The effect of presenting them from this dignified aspect is to raise their status in the eyes of the spectator. El Primo is portrayed leafing through the pages of an enormous tome. His small size makes the books surrounding him appear even more gigantic than they are. His occupation here is undoubtedly a reference to his administrative duties at the court. At the same time, it is probably an example of humanist satirical jest, which would often decry the senseless writing and reading of books as a contemptible vice. Contemporary spectators would never have accepted that a dwarf knew how to use the attributes of a scholar; the artist thus seems to be using an apparently grotesque discrepancy to poke fun at the pseudo-scholars of his day.

Even in Seville, where he was accepted into the painters’ guild of St Luke before he was eighteen and then, in 1620, opened a workshop and employed apprentices himself, Vel�zquez was already embarking on portraiture, a path that would lead him to a place among the major portraitists in the history of art. There are around half a dozen portraits extant of very different people from Vel�zquez’ early period in Seville, including two sensitive drawings vibrant with life, both showing a young girl and dated to 1618. Since very few of the artist’s authentic drawings have survived, these two are particularly worthy of notice.

It was quite usual for the king to ride out with a small retinue in the extensive game preserves of the densely wooded Pardo - Philip IV was a bold and enthusiastic huntsman, and he wanted his court painter to record the stags he had killed for posterity.

When the Infanta Doña Mar�a, daughter of Philip III and Queen Margarita, set out for Vienna in December 1629 to meet the husband who had been chosen for her long before, the king of Hungary, later Emperor Ferdinand III, her journey included a stay of several months in Naples in 1630. Vel�zquez made haste to Naples to portray his sovereign’s sister’, who was famous for her beauty. He worked with the utmost care to emphasize the enamel-like smoothness of her fine features. Every detail, for instance the typically protuberant Habsburg lower lip, shows a striking similarity to the living model. The delicate carmine of her lips, the beautiful Titian shade of her hair, depicted in relaxed brushstrokes with dark brown shadows and bright yellow highlights, all display the artistic skill now at the command of Vel�zquez in his harmonious combination of state splendour with the individuality of his sitter.

The carefully modelled face in this head-and-shoulders portrait was to serve as the basis for several full-length portraits of the Infanta, workshop copies that may have been intended as gifts to royal residences abroad.

At the end of the 1640s Vel�zquez was on the threshold to his late work and the peak of his artistic achievement, to which his likenesses of the Spanish Habsburgs, not least, made a considerable contribution. They are among the finest examples of court portraiture ever painted. This picture represents Infanta Margarita, born on 12 July 1651, daughter of Philip IV and his second wife, Mariana. The Infanta is the central figure of Vel�zquez’s famous composition, Las Meninas, painted three years later.

Maria Margarita (1651-1673) was the daughter of King Philip IV of Spain and his second wife Mariana of Austria. She was betrothed as a child to her maternal uncle and paternal cousin, Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor. After giving birth to six children and weakened by many miscarriages, she died at the age of twenty-one. She is a central figure in the famous Las Meninas by Diego Vel�zquez.

The painting represents the Infanta at the age of four. The inscription at the top of the painting is a later addition. The attribution to Vel�zquez is debated, the contribution of the workshop is assumed.

Mar�a Teresa was the daughter of Philip IV and his first wife Isabel de Bourbon. Her portrait is a routine work from the late period of Vel�zquez.

Don Carlos (1607-1632) was the brother of King Philip IV.

The young prince was a sickly child from birth, and he died at the age of four. He appears in this picture in a pink dress trimmed with silver, with a translucent pinafore over it, and bearing some striking accessories: various amulets were supposed to protect him against the evil eye, and an amber apple was thought to ward off infections. The bloodless face of the blue-eyed prince looks even paler due to the contrast with the silver highlights in his straw-coloured fair hair. Pale daylight falls in through the open door in the background. Otherwise, the room is full of shadows that seem to threaten the little figure. Palomino considered this portrait one of the finest ever painted by Vel�zquez, and singled out the little dog on the chair for special praise.

Palomino considered this portrait one of the finest ever painted by Vel�zquez, and singled out the little dog on the chair for special praise.

The court appointment of Vel�zquez gave him few opportunities for religious painting, and only occasionally did he execute subject pictures, except during his Italian journeys. He was little influenced by other artists, though he profited from the Titians in the Spanish Royal Collection, and the visit of Rubens in 1628, which was his first contact with a great living painter, who was also a court painter. Whether or not it was Rubens who inspired him to visit Italy, it was due to Rubens’s influence that he obtained permission to go. He left in August 1629, visited Genoa, Venice, Rome and Naples (where he met Ribera) and returned to Madrid in 1631. The Joseph’s Bloody Coat Brought to Jacob shows his preoccupation with the male nude.

Inspired by his study of Titian, but never lapsing into mere imitation, Vel�zquez has softened his line in this painting, which was completed in Rome in the year 1630. These influences are clearly illustrated by the detail of the little dog in the foreground of the picture, a feature often found in Tintoretto.

The composition of this picture portrays the dramatic climax of the Biblical story, when the garments of Joseph, sold into slavery by his brothers, are dipped in the blood of a goat and shown to his old father Jacob, to make him believe that his favourite son is dead. The physical reactions of the participants in this grim story are very forcefully depicted. The setting is a large hall with its floor tiled in a chessboard pattern, a frequent element in the works of both Titian and Tintoretto. In the background, there is a view of a beautifully painted landscape.

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�tienne Nicolas M�hul: Joseph, aria

The Venetian influences on this painting are clearly illustrated by the detail of the little dog in the foreground of the picture, a feature often found in Tintoretto.

Montañ�s was the greatest Spanish sculptor of the 17th century, known as ‘el dios de la madera’ (the god of wood) on account of his mastery as a carver. He worked for most of his long and productive career in Seville. Vel�zquez painted this portrait in Madrid when the sculptor made a portrait head of King Philip IV.

The sitter of this portrait is Juan Mateos, the Royal Master of the Hunt in Madrid. It gives significance to the painting that it is a portrait of someone other than a member of the royal family, their Minister Olivares, or the dwarves and fools who populated the palace. The painting formerly was attributed to Rubens, or Titian.

Exceptional powers of observation and an unprecedentedly vibrant technique make Vel�zquez the greatest Spanish painter of his century. As court painter to King Philip IV of Spain, Vel�zquez was sent in 1649 to Rome, then the centre of the international art world. He wished to pay another visit to a country that was so rich in art, and he had also been commissioned to buy pictures and casts of classical statues in Rome for Philip IV’s collections. He met the most famous Italian artists of the time in the capital, and tried unsuccessfully to entice some of them to Madrid. He also showed his own skill in many portraits painted while he was in Rome. He made here two of his greatest portraits, one of Pope Innocent X (Doria Pamphilj Gallery, Rome) and another, of his studio assistant Juan de Pareja, a Sevillian of Moorish descent.

In the portrait of Juan de Pareja, a wide white collar with a jagged border contrasts effectively with the black of the model’s hair and beard and his copper-coloured complexion. The dark eyes glow with great expressive force.

According to an eye-witness, this half-length portrait of Pareja was displayed in the Pantheon in Rome during the celebrations of the Feast of St Joseph on 19 March 1650, and met with unreserved admiration from artists of many different nationalities. one connoisseur remarked that while all the rest was art, this alone was truth. It won admission to the Roman Academy for the Spanish court painter, serving Vel�zquez as a kind of entree, and he could expect its success to bring him commissions to paint some very distinguished people. Sure enough, the Pope himself was soon sitting for him, and so were members of the papal household.

Spain’s greatest painter was also one of the supreme artists of all time. A master of technique, highly individual in style, Diego Vel�zquez may have had a greater influence on European art than any other painter.

Vel�zquez lived in Madrid as court painter. His paintings include landscapes, mythological and religious subjects, and scenes from common life, called genre pictures. Most of them, however, are portraits of court notables that rank with the portraits painted by Titian and Anthony Van Dyck.

Duties of Vel�zquez’ royal offices also occupied his time. He was eventually made marshal of the royal household, and as such he was responsible for the royal quarters and for planning ceremonies.

Vel�zquez was called the “noblest and most commanding man among the artists of his country.” He was a master realist, and no painter has surpassed him in the ability to seize essential features and fix them on canvas with a few broad, sure strokes. “His men and women seem to breathe,” it has been said; “his horses are full of action and his dogs of life.”

As court painter to Philip IV, Vel�zquez spent a large part of his life recording, in his cool, detached way, the objective appearance of this rigidly conventional royal household, with little interpretation but with the keenest eye for selecting what was important for pictoral expression and with a control of paint to secure exactly the desired effect.

In painting these royal portraits, whatever interpretation he made or whatever emotional reaction he experienced he kept to himself. Royalty, courtliness of the most rigid character was his task to portray, not individual personality.

Another version of this painting, without the biblical scene in the background, is in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.

The identity of the sitter is not known but she is evidently a lady of quality. The painting is a rare example of Vel�zquez’s portraiture outside the Court circle of Philip IV.

Vel�zquez himself is seen standing with brush and palette in front of a tall canvas which we can only see from behind. In a dark frame beneath the pictures hanging on the back wall can be seen - presumably in a mirror - the parents of the princess, the royal couple. To the right of the mirror, on a staircase leading to a door and a brightly lit room to the side, stands Jose Nieto, the queen’s chamberlain.

The artist has stepped back slightly from the front of the canvas and paused, looking forwards out of the picture evidently to fix in his mind what he was currently working on in the painting. The painter is looking out of the picture, and is turning the beholder into an accomplice in the picture’s effect mechanisms. In this process, a central role is played by the mirror on the rear wall and the metaphors associated with mirrors. The answer to the question of whether the mirror in the background shows the royal couple just entering the room, in the position occupied by the beholder, has been answered in the negative by geometrical analyses. Rather, the mirror must be reflecting a detail of the canvas that Vel�zquez is working on. Even the earliest commentators resolved the problem by deciding that the mirror must be reflecting the painting and not the king and queen in person. The persons in the picture are looking into a mirror and seeing themselves - the theme is an allegory of painting, or more precisely portrait painting.

On the left in the painting, dark and calm, the painter himself can be seen standing with brush and palette in front of a tall canvas.

Mar�a Sarmientio is giving her mistress, the Infanta Margarita, water in a bucaro, a red pottery jug, handing it to her on a tray. The children of Philip IV and his first wife Isabel de Bourbon were dead by the date of this painting, except for the eighteen-year-old Infanta Mar�a Teresa, who is not shown in this group. Philip married Mariana as his second wife in 1649, and at the time this picture was painted the Infanta Margarita, born on 12 July 1651, was her only child. The little princess’s face is shown in an aura of almost other-worldly beauty such as Vel�zquez hardly achieved in any other work.

The queen’s maid of honour, Dona Mar�a Agustina Sarmiento, one of the meninas, is kneeling at the Infanta’s feet, handing her a jug of water.

The detail shows the heiress to the throne, the Infanta Margarita.

The other maid of honour, Dona Isabel de Velasco stands behind the princess, and beside her we see the grotesquely misshapen female dwarf Mari-B�rbola and the male dwarf Nicolasico Pertusato; the latter, as Palomino points out, is placing his foot on the mastiff lying in front of the group to demonstrate the lethargic animal’s good temper. Further back, almost swallowed up in the shadows, are a man described only as guardadamas - a guard or escort to the ladies - and the lady in waiting Doña Marcela de Ulloa. To the right of the mirror, on a flight of steps leading up to a doorway and a brightly lit adjoining room, stands Jose Nieto, the queen’s palace marshal.

“Las Meninas” is a Portuguese word used to name the Maids of Honour of the Royal children in the 17th century.

Las Meninas or The Royal Family is one of the great problem pictures in the history of art. An almost infinite number of interpretations have now been proposed for the scene it shows. At first sight, however, Las Meninas seems to present no problems at all, and indeed appears perfectly straightforward in its sober geometry and good-humoured clarity.

It is set in a room in the Alc�zar, equipped by Vel�zquez as a studio, and shows the heiress to the throne, the Infanta Margarita, with her court. Palomino names all those present. The queen’s maid of honour, Dona Maria Agustina Sarmiento, one of the meninas, is kneeling at the Infanta’s feet, handing her a jug of water. The other maid of honour, Dona Isabel de Velasco stands behind the princess, and beside her we see the grotesquely misshapen female dwarf Mari-B�rbola and the male dwarf Nicolasico Pertusato; the latter, as Palomino points out, is placing his foot on the mastiff lying in front of the group to demonstrate the lethargic animal’s good temper. Further back, almost swallowed up in the shadows, are a man described only as guardadamas - a guard or escort to the ladies - and the lady in waiting Doña Marcela de Ulloa.

Vel�zquez is standing with brush and palette in front of a tall canvas; we can see only the back of it. There are some large pictures hanging on the back wall of the room. Two of them were painted by Vel�zquez’s son-in-law, Mazo, from models by Rubens, and show scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, one of them another version of the punishment of Arachne. The princess’s parents, the king and queen, appear in a dark frame below these pictures, probably the glass of a mirror. To the right of the mirror, on a flight of steps leading up to a doorway and a brightly lit adjoining room, stands Jose Nieto, the queen’s palace marshal.

There are several basic questions that have been asked again and again about this picture. What is Vel�zquez painting on the front of the canvas that is hidden from us? Where did he stand in order to paint the scene and himself in it? What is the source of the image in the mirror - that is, just where in the room must the royal couple have been standing for their reflection to appear? And finally, is there any significance in the fact that the red cross of the Order of Santiago is prominently applied to the artist’s clothing?

It was long thought that Vel�zquez was creating a picture without any metaphysical or speculative reference, and was merely recording a fleeting moment in permanent form, as if in a snapshot. According to this theory the subject was no more than an ordinary scene of palace life.

A different hypothesis is put forward by art historians, who believe that intellect and keen perspicacity, as well as the artist’s eye and hand, were involved in the painting of Las Meninas. The largest number of interpretations have been put forward for the mirror on the back wall, sometimes also thought to be a painted canvas. Much learned industry has also been applied to the question of location: in which room in the palace is this scene taking place?

Despite the riddles hidden in the painting of Las Meninas we must not overlook its artistic mastery, particularly as expressed in the figure of the Infanta Margarita surrounded by people of lesser birth. For it was on the princess that the dynastic hopes of the Spanish Habsburgs rested after the death of Prince Baltasar Carlos.

“Las Meninas” is a Portuguese word used to name the Maids of Honour of the Royal children in the 17th century.

Las Meninas or The Royal Family is one of the great problem pictures in the history of art. An almost infinite number of interpretations have now been proposed for the scene it shows. At first sight, however, Las Meninas seems to present no problems at all, and indeed appears perfectly straightforward in its sober geometry and good-humoured clarity.

It is set in a room in the Alc�zar, equipped by Vel�zquez as a studio, and shows the heiress to the throne, the Infanta Margarita, with her court. Palomino names all those present. The queen’s maid of honour, Dona Maria Agustina Sarmiento, one of the meninas, is kneeling at the Infanta’s feet, handing her a jug of water. The other maid of honour, Dona Isabel de Velasco stands behind the princess, and beside her we see the grotesquely misshapen female dwarf Mari-B�rbola and the male dwarf Nicolasico Pertusato; the latter, as Palomino points out, is placing his foot on the mastiff lying in front of the group to demonstrate the lethargic animal’s good temper. Further back, almost swallowed up in the shadows, are a man described only as guardadamas - a guard or escort to the ladies - and the lady in waiting Doña Marcela de Ulloa.

Vel�zquez is standing with brush and palette in front of a tall canvas; we can see only the back of it. There are some large pictures hanging on the back wall of the room. Two of them were painted by Vel�zquez’s son-in-law, Mazo, from models by Rubens, and show scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, one of them another version of the punishment of Arachne. The princess’s parents, the king and queen, appear in a dark frame below these pictures, probably the glass of a mirror. To the right of the mirror, on a flight of steps leading up to a doorway and a brightly lit adjoining room, stands Jose Nieto, the queen’s palace marshal.

There are several basic questions that have been asked again and again about this picture. What is Vel�zquez painting on the front of the canvas that is hidden from us? Where did he stand in order to paint the scene and himself in it? What is the source of the image in the mirror - that is, just where in the room must the royal couple have been standing for their reflection to appear? And finally, is there any significance in the fact that the red cross of the Order of Santiago is prominently applied to the artist’s clothing?

It was long thought that Vel�zquez was creating a picture without any metaphysical or speculative reference, and was merely recording a fleeting moment in permanent form, as if in a snapshot. According to this theory the subject was no more than an ordinary scene of palace life.

A different hypothesis is put forward by art historians, who believe that intellect and keen perspicacity, as well as the artist’s eye and hand, were involved in the painting of Las Meninas. The largest number of interpretations have been put forward for the mirror on the back wall, sometimes also thought to be a painted canvas. Much learned industry has also been applied to the question of location: in which room in the palace is this scene taking place?

Despite the riddles hidden in the painting of Las Meninas we must not overlook its artistic mastery, particularly as expressed in the figure of the Infanta Margarita surrounded by people of lesser birth. For it was on the princess that the dynastic hopes of the Spanish Habsburgs rested after the death of Prince Baltasar Carlos.

In this picture of Mars, the classical god of war the inspiration of Rubens is evident.

The painting - known also as the portrait with two watches - was sent to the Habsburg court in Vienna to potential suitors of Mar�a Teresa, the daughter of Spain’s King Philip IV and ultimately the wife of Louis XIV of France. In portraying the royal family, Vel�zquez generally painted a bust-length portrait from life, which he and his assistants would use as a model in creating full-length versions. There is another version of the painting in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

The satirical tradition had spread throughout Europe via the humanists, and Vel�zquez’s knowledge of it is evident in his use of ideal types in portraits of the Cynic philosopher Menippus and the Greek composer of animal fables Aesop, possibly painted for the hunting lodge Torre de la Parada, near the Buen Retiro Palace. Both figures are shown full length and would have made suitable counterparts to the pictures of Democritus and Heraclitus by Rubens in the Torre de la Parada. It was here, too, that many of Vel�zquez’s portraits of court fools and dwarfs were hung.

Aesop had, during Classical antiquity, been seen in conjunction with the Seven Sages; Menippus was known as a castigator of hack philosophers, whom he satirised in different literary genres.

The two portraits of philosophers, together with the portraits of fools and dwarfs, were intended to warn the king not to lose touch with the common people and their wisdom.

Since the publication in 1925 of the contents of Vel�zquez’s private library, which contained 156 learned works, it has been obvious that he did have an extensive fund of knowledge. His references to classical mythology, for instance in the painting Mercury and Argus of around 1659, should be viewed in this light.

This painting is one of several early genre scenes by Vel�zquez for which there are no known precedents in Seville. Using a powerful, focused light, itself a novel feature, Vel�zquez creates a tour de force of naturalistic painting in which different shapes, textures, and surfaces are miraculously brought to life.

The Old Woman Frying Eggs shows an elderly cook sitting in front of a small clay vessel in which she is cooking eggs over a charcoal fire. The artist’s eye has observed and recorded every telling detail, down to the thin sliver of glowing coals that warm the eggs which are absent-mindedly tended by the woman. The worn but fine features of her face, beneath the confident painting of the veil on her head, bear witness to a life well lived. There is a serious, meditative quality about the woman’s figure, and the boy with the melon under his arm and a carafe of wine in his hand looks out of the picture at us with comparable gravity. The contrast of youth and age conveys the transience of life, and the egg in the woman’s hand suggests associations, familiar at the time, with the mutability of all earthly matter and with another life beyond the grave. The background is dark and indistinct, in contrast to the often over-crowded backgrounds of Dutch kitchen scenes.

An interesting feature of this picture, the main subject of which is the cooking of eggs in a clay pot, is the honeydew melon with a cord slung crosswise around it, making it resemble an imperial orb.

At an age when artists of today are only just beginning their studies at college, Vel�zquez was already painting his genre scenes: there are several studies of musicians and peasants eating. Later, around 1625, he began to paint scenes from the Gospels in which he found it possible to introduce everyday objects; for instance, in his picture of Christ in the house of Martha; he filled the foreground with a still-life of fish and eggs, relegating the figure of Christ to the background.

In his Breakfast the human figures are scarcely more important than the still-life. It is of course true that the three figures reveal a thorough knowledge of anatomy, while the details are well chosen to indicate character and personal relationships. Superb craftsmanship is shown in the painting of the full, parted lips of the younger man, the eyes of the old man listening to the story and his slight movement towards the glass and the expression on the face of the woman pouring out the wine, concentrating lest a single drop be spilled. Nevertheless it is possible to argue that the most striking part of the composition is the still-life arranged on the white tablecloth. As a description of the bread, fish, lemon, carrot and copper jar seen here there could scarcely be a more inappropriate phrase than nature morte (dead nature), the term used for a still-life in so many languages. Still though these objects are, they have a genuine pictorial quality, a vigour which is akin to life itself.

The Peasants at Table is one of Vel�zquez’s finest early pieces of the type known in Spain as a “bodeg�n”, a combination of conversation piece and still-life. There is another version of Peasant at Table in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 26 minutes):

Johann Sebastian Bach: Cantata BWV 212 (Bauernkantate)

Five equestrian portraits, those of Philip III, Queen Margarita, Isabella of Bourbon, Philip IV, and Prince Baltasar Carlos, belonged to the colossal decorative scheme of the Hall of the Realms in the Buen Retiro Palace. The scheme was organized by the Count-Duke of Olivares, with the aim of affirming the glory of the Spanish Monarchy during what was in fact a period of decline.

The picture of Philip III on Horseback is by an unknown painter, and was over-painted by either Vel�zquez or an assistant between 1634 and 1635. It is the horse’s head in particular that betrays the master’s hand.

In 1622 Vel�zquez traveled to Madrid for what would prove to be a vain attempt to gain a foothold at the court of Philip IV. Discouraged but not defeated, he returned to Madrid the following year and, with the assistance of his friends from Seville, he was given the opportunity to execute a portrait of the king. This painting was reworked extensively a few years later. The portrait was favourably received and the desired appointment obtained: on 6 October 1623 Vel�zquez was named court painter.

There are several versions of this late portrait of the king executed between 1655 and 1660 by Vel�zquez or his workshop.

Philip IV in Armour, a portrait of the period around 1628, over-painted and cut to its present size at a later date, probably was executed after the portrait of the king in parade armour painted around 1623, by Juan Bautista Maino. This picture by Philip’s Italian-trained drawing master also shows the subject in a lifelike attitude, but the modelling of the face in Vel�zquez’s portrait is much more expressive, and its extrovert clarity shows up more impressively in contrast to the sash draped decoratively over the armour and painted in many shades of red.

In this painting the restriction of surrounding areas and the general pose found in earlier portraits of the king are still present, but the subject’s whole attitude is more relaxed, the flesh tints, probably under the influence of Rubens, are painted with more fluidity, the accents of colour - eyes gleaming like black tortoiseshell, the golden lights on the waves of the hair - are placed with more emphasis, and shapes conveying Baroque dignity, such as the profuse folds of the red curtain, have made their way into the formerly sparse interior. Above all, Vel�zquez’s new delight in luxuriant colour is reflected in his depiction of the silk embroidery and the silver and brown tones of the king’s clothing.

The king is holding in his right hand a paper with the inscription “Senor/Diego Vel�zquez/ Pintor de V. Mg” - the opening words of a petition to him from Vel�zquez.

The unattractive matt white of the stockings is the result of an unskilful restoration of the picture in 1936, but otherwise the work is a good example of the skilled manner that Vel�zquez had now mastered.

Five equestrian portraits, those of Philip III, Queen Margarita, Isabella of Bourbon, Philip IV, and Prince Baltasar Carlos, belonged to the colossal decorative scheme of the Hall of the Realms in the Buen Retiro Palace. The scheme was organized by the Count-Duke of Olivares, with the aim of affirming the glory of the Spanish Monarchy during what was in fact a period of decline.

Philip IV on Horseback was of course the most important item in this cycle. The king is shown here in all his absolute might and power enjoying, as a contemporary account puts it, a triumph such as few heroes of the past or present could boast. Seventeenth-century Spanish horses, bred from crosses with Arab stallions, were famous for their proud bearing and temperamental beauty. Vel�zquez had the opportunity of observing them daily in the royal stables or when the king put them through their paces. The curvet represented the peak of equestrian skill, the moment when the rider had to gather all his strength together, and in this picture the king is making his mount curvet. Baroque art also understood this pose as signifying the sovereignty with which a monarch tamed the unruly power of the people or the animal savagery of an enemy.

In line with these ideas, and in a picture now lost, Rubens had already shown Philip IV on horseback triumphing over his enemies. Vel�zquez does not call upon the emotionally highly charged background usual in Rubens, nor does he employ any grand allegorical accessories. He also does not exaggerate the king’s size by placing him in front of a very low horizon with tiny soldiers in the middle ground, as the Flemish master did in his portrait of Philip II. While Vel�zquez uses a more restrained pictorial rhetoric than Rubens, his royal horseman is livelier and more elegant than the subject in another famous painting - Titian’s Charles V at M�hlberg. The pure profile emphasizes the fine outline of man and beast, and contrasts the rising movement of the horse with the falling slope of an extensive and idealized landscape. Its pigmentation, shot with beautiful shades of green and blue, is reminiscent of sixteenth-century Flemish landscapes.

The king is shown here in all his absolute might and power enjoying, as a contemporary account puts it, a triumph such as few heroes of the past or present could boast.

The second title comes from the fact that the painting was executed in three days (June, 1644) in the Aragonian town of Fraga during the campaign against the French.

Perhaps the preeminent Spanish artist of the seventeenth century, Vel�zquez was, from 1623 on, court painter to Philip IV in Madrid. In 1650 Vel�zquez was sent to Italy to buy paintings for one of his monarch’s palaces; while in Rome the artist was commissioned to portray the Pope. The final version (now in the Galleria Doria, Rome) was preceded by several small sketches. This canvas was executed probably by someone in his circle. Vel�zquez was given the unenviable task of depicting the most powerful and, according to contemporaries, the ugliest man in Rome. The artist was successful, for when the Pontiff saw the portrait he is said to have remarked, “troppo vero” (all too true!).

The sitter of the portrait was the prime minister of Philip IV. He began his career with a dizzying rise and ended it with a no-less-vertiginous fall, spending his last years in exile. When his star was ascending he introduced the young Vel�zquez to the king, and the artist painted his powerful patron several times. In the present portrait, made shortly before Olivares suffered a series of defeats in both his foreign policy projects and court intrigues, his face clearly betrays fatigue and disillusionment.

“He was tall in stature, thin, choleric, splenetic, with a red face, bald in front with thick eyebrows bent above the nose […], that revealed his severity and harshness…”. These were the words used by Giacinto Gigli in 1655 to describe the pope (Giovanni Battista Pamphilj [1574-1655], made a cardinal in 1629 and elected to the throne on September 16, 1644), adding that “his face was the most deformed ever born among men.” Justi and later Morelli considered his head “the most repugnant… of all the Fisherman’s successors” and “insignificant, indeed vulgar,” with an expression similar to “that of a cunning lawyer.” And yet this ugly and sullen man was paradoxically the subject of one of the most admired portraits of the seventeenth century, and perhaps of all time.

Pope Innocent, aged seventy-five at the time, was a man of remarkable vigour, with a great capacity for work and a hot and violent temper. In the painting he wears the white liturgical under-vestment known as an alb, a biretta, and a red cape to which subdued highlights lend a sheen suggesting the texture of fabric. The Pope is seated in a red armchair, which is picked out from the opulent red of the curtain behind it by its gilded ornamentation. In the strong, almost rustic features of the Pope’s reddened face with its fleshy cheeks, the critically keen suspicious eyes strike a note of lively intelligence. The fascinating nature of a man aware of his own power is wonderfully expressed in the contrast between the face and the fine nervous hands, which convey the sensitivity of this powerful figure.

Mention has often been made of the chromatic unity of this portrait, in which the red flesh tones, the red cape, the red camauro, and the armchair of red velvet against the backdrop of a red door create such a dramatic effect that, if the pope were to open his mouth, even his saliva would be blood red. This marvelously orchestrated profusion of crimson tints - sometimes, as in the cape, with cold reflections as if “lit by neon” - undoubtedly derives from the example of Titian, while the representation of the contrasting white gown certainly harks back to Veronese, the only sixteenth-century Venetian painter who knew how to handle this difficult “non-colour.” A man of power, bolt upright, depicted in magenta, an aggressive and vital colour, that together with white symbolizes creation.

The portrait of Pope Innocent X is by common consent one of the world’s supreme masterpieces of portraiture, unsurpassed in its breathtaking handling of paint. Apparently the Pope was not at first very enthusiastic about his portrait, describing it as troppo vero, “too real”. However, we are told that it eventually won his approval, and he presented the Spanish painter with a very valuable gold chain. Vel�zquez himself must presumably have been very pleased with the portrait, or he would not have taken a replica back to Spain with him. His art colleagues certainly praised it, and many copies of the work were made.

With this portrait Vel�zquez joins the ranks of those painters who, from the Renaissance onwards, produced magnificent papal likenesses. Outstanding examples, which he must have known, were Raphael’s portraits of Pope Julius II (c. ¹⁵¹¹⁄₁₂; London, National Gallery), and Pope Leo X with two cardinals (¹⁵¹⁸⁄₁₉; Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi), and several pictures by Titian of Pope Paul III, still extant in Naples.

This painting is probably a preparatory study for the image of the queen which appears in the mirror in Las Meninas, the artist’s masterpiece.

Spain’s greatest painter was also one of the supreme artists of all time. A master of technique, highly individual in style, Diego Vel�zquez may have had a greater influence on European art than any other painter.

Vel�zquez lived in Madrid as court painter. His paintings include landscapes, mythological and religious subjects, and scenes from common life, called genre pictures. Most of them, however, are portraits of court notables that rank with the portraits painted by Titian and Anthony Van Dyck.

Duties of Vel�zquez’s royal offices also occupied his time. He was eventually made marshal of the royal household, and as such he was responsible for the royal quarters and for planning ceremonies.

Vel�zquez was called the “noblest and most commanding man among the artists of his country.” He was a master realist, and no painter has surpassed him in the ability to seize essential features and fix them on canvas with a few broad, sure strokes. “His men and women seem to breathe,” it has been said; “his horses are full of action and his dogs of life.”

As court painter to Philip IV, Vel�zquez spent a large part of his life recording, in his cool, detached way, the objective appearance of this rigidly conventional royal household, with little interpretation but with the keenest eye for selecting what was important for pictoral expression and with a control of paint to secure exactly the desired effect.

In painting these royal portraits, whatever interpretation he made or whatever emotional reaction he experienced he kept to himself. Royalty, courtliness of the most rigid character was his task to portray, not individual personality.

Vel�zquez painted over 20 portraits of Philip IV, some representing the king standing, some other on horseback. All portraits follow the prototypes in the Prado and the National Gallery, London. The attribution of this fragment to Vel�zquez is debated, many critics consider it a product from the workshop.

Vel�zquez sent this painting to Florence for a statue to be cast in bronze by Pietro Tacca, who had inherited the workshop of Cosimo I and Eleonora’s sculptor Giambologna. In the painting, the slope behind the rider and his mount suggests a support for the nine-ton statue. Tacca, however, achieved the feat of a free-standing high-rearing horse.

In the eighteenth century this painting was attributed either to Rubens or his pupil Van Dyck. The mistaken attribution is not surprising. Through their close study of Titian, the naturalness of their approach, the immediacy of their portrayals, and their depth of psychological penetration, the portraits of the mature Vel�zquez come far closer to Van Dyck than to any of his Spanish contemporaries. The parallels extend even to the thin, almost sketchy manner in which the two artists applied their paint.

In this portrait, the man’s hair hangs over his ears like a veil, and Vel�zquez has deliberately incorporated the ground here as part of the effect. He is content with economical strokes, dashed off lightly but with the utmost confidence, to indicate the details of the garments.

This portrait by Vel�zquez is unusual for showing a woman on so large a scale. It is supposed that the sitter is Doña In�z de Zuñiga, sister of the count of Olivares, and duchess of San-Lucar.

Alonso Cano and Vel�zquez were good friends from their days as students in Seville. Even they worked together restoring the Venetian paintings of the king damaged by fire. It is supposed that the sitter of this painting is Alonso Cano, however, there is no documentary evidence of it.

The picture of the prince seems to reflect a cool morning: the grass, wet with dew, is still shimmering in shades of blue-green in front of the dozing setter.

The realistic portrait was executed in the first years of the mature period of the artist. The painting shows Crown Prince Baltasar Carlos in hunting costume, “when he was six years old”, according to the inscription, which would make the date 1635, or more probably 1636. The picture of the prince seems to reflect a cool morning: the grass, wet with dew, is still shimmering in shades of blue-green in front of the dozing setter.

Together with four more equestrian portraits painted or partly over-painted by Vel�zquez (Philip III, Queen Margarita, Isabella of Borbon, Philip IV), a cycle of 13 battle scenes by Caj�s, Velazqu�z, Maino, Zurbar�n, Carducho, Castello, Jusepe Leonardo, and Pereda, and a series of the Labours of Hercules by Zurbar�n, this picture was an element of the colossal decorative scheme of the Hall of the Realms in the Buen Retiro Palace. The scheme was organized by the Count-Duke of Olivares, with the aim of affirming the glory of the Spanish Monarchy during what was in fact a period of decline.

Among the five equestrian portraits, only the portraits of Philip IV and Prince Baltasar Carlos are entirely by Vel�zquez’s own hand. The other three are by unknown painters and retouched by Vel�zquez and assistants.

The portrait of Prince Baltasar Carlos, though highly conventional, is painted by Vel�zquez with his usual conviction, and with brilliantly suggestive strokes of impasto. Highlights applied with masterly skill emphasize the flowing contours around the prince’s face, which is bathed in light and appears translucent, as if in a pastel. Even the shadows cast by the brim of his hat are transparent. The gold embroidery of the Infante’s green costume stands out in attractive contrast, emphasizing the brilliant blond of the child’s hair.

In the field of royal portraiture, the portrait of the infant or child ruler poses a particular problem to the artist. A majestic pose, sumptuous clothing and the traditional outward trappings of dignity inevitably clash with the very nature of childhood. Vel�zquez solves this problem by placing the child on a sturdy horse so that the little figure is raised, as on a monumental plinth, to the “correct” position in the picture. This view is further vindicated by a sweeping landscape whose unspoilt nature creates an uncontrived link with the serious, yet still softly contoured and unspoilt mien of the child’s face.

The long-awaited heir to the throne, Prince Baltasar Carlos, born on 17 October 1629, was his parents’ (Philip IV and Queen Isabel) pride and joy. While Vel�zquez was in Rome he attended one of the glittering parties held in many European cities to celebrate the child’s birth. No sooner was he back in Madrid than he was commissioned to paint the prince, now sixteen months old, and in another portrait of the same subject he shows the fair-haired little boy with a curious playmate. Dressed in a magnificently embroidered ceremonial robe which makes him into a miniature adult, the prince is standing on a carpeted step beneath a draped wine-red curtain, holding a baton and a dagger in his little hands. The steel gorget indicates his future role as a military commander. His face, expressing all the charm of his French mother in childish miniature, is turned towards another child in the left foreground of the picture, and the child’s abnormally large head is looking back at him.

This figure is a dwarf, it is now thought probably a girl, one of the human toys so popular at many European courts of the time. The physically handicapped figure of the dwarf holds a silver rattle and an apple in imitation of an orb and sceptre, and is acting the part of a comic major-domo to the future little king. One wonders whether their Majesties and the courtiers laughed at this picture and the court painter’s amusing idea.

The prince’s face is modelled with gentle regularity, whereas the paint is applied to the head of the female dwarf with more irregular granulation. This contrasting brushwork is often used by Vel�zquez in his pictures to accentuate certain features of their content.

In Spain (and other countries too) there was a long tradition of including dwarfs in royal portraits as subordinate figures. Basically, these deformed little creatures were merely attributes of the royal dignity, part of the furnishings of the court and regarded as neuter beings rather than fully human.

Dressed in a magnificently embroidered ceremonial robe which makes him into a miniature adult, the prince is standing on a carpeted step beneath a draped wine-red curtain, holding a baton and a dagger in his little hands.

As a court painter, Vel�zquez was required to paint group portraits as well as these actual or fictional portraits of individual figures. He organized a workshop of competent artists, and in 1633 recruited the services of his son-in-law Juan Bautista Mart�nez del Mazo. Mazo probably did a good deal of work on the picture of around 1636 showing Prince Baltasar Carlos with the Count-Duke of Olivares at the Royal Mews. The Count-Duke stands in the middle ground to the right of the picture, with his master-at-arms; figures on the balcony above him include Philip IV, Queen Isabel and several courtiers who cannot be identified for certain.

The belly of the horse on which the little prince is mounted is disproportionately convex and in fact so coarsely depicted that one suspects the unskilful hand of an apprentice rather than a deliberate distortion.

The Count-Duke of Olivares stands in the middle ground to the right of the picture, with his master-at-arms; figures on the balcony above him include Philip IV, Queen Isabel and several courtiers who cannot be identified for certain.

The dwarf in the painting is probably Don Diego de Acedo, called El Primo.

Vel�zquez stayed in Rome in 1649-50. Philip IV wanted his favourite court painter, now enjoying such a triumph in Rome, to paint his second wife, Queen Mariana, and to give his advice on the renovation of the old royal palace in Madrid, the Alc�zar. Consequently, he wished Vel�zquez to come back to court as soon as possible, but none the less the artist delayed his return for another whole year.

The portrait of Queen Mariana required by the king was not completed until 1653. The queen was the daughter of Emperor Ferdinand III and Philip’s sister the Infanta Maria, and had married her widowed uncle in 1649. She was nineteen at the time of this portrait, which shows her full length, wearing a black dress with silver braid, and of course adorned with much valuable jewellery: gold necklaces and bracelets, and a large gold brooch on her close-fitting bodice. Her right hand rests on the back of a chair, and she holds a delicate lace scarf in her left hand. The picture is bathed in harmonious shades of black and red, although the dramatically drawn curtain has been painted over by another hand.

The composition turns on the focal point of the queen’s alabaster skin and rouged face, small and almost doll-like under her hair, which is dressed very wide. Her bust, tightly encased in the bodice, her stiff farthingale and all her fashionable magnificence are rendered true to life by Vel�zquez, and at the same time he reveals them as a theatrical show concealing the girl’s natural physical nature beneath the armour of courtly constraint.

The Queen’s right hand rests on the back of a chair, and she holds a delicate lace scarf in her left hand.

Five equestrian portraits, those of Philip III, Queen Margarita, Isabella of Bourbon, Philip IV, and Prince Baltasar Carlos, belonged to the colossal decorative scheme of the Hall of the Realms in the Buen Retiro Palace. The scheme was organized by the Count-Duke of Olivares, with the aim of affirming the glory of the Spanish Monarchy during what was in fact a period of decline.

This painting is by unknown painter and retouched by Vel�zquez and assistants.

Vel�zquez painted the queen between 1631 and 1632. She was the daughter of King Henry IV of France and Marie de Medici, and had married Philip IV in 1615, before he came to the throne. The artist devoted the utmost ingenuity to painting the queen’s robes. Besides depicting all the material splendour shown in this picture, he was interested, as so often in later paintings, in the wealth of nuances to be conveyed by the play of light on black fabrics, which he often exaggerated to produce glittering reflections.

Vel�zquez painted this portrait over an older picture of the queen that he had executed towards the end of the 1620s.

Five equestrian portraits, those of Philip III, Queen Margarita, Isabella of Bourbon, Philip IV, and Prince Baltasar Carlos, belonged to the colossal decorative scheme of the Hall of the Realms in the Buen Retiro Palace. The scheme was organized by the Count-Duke of Olivares, with the aim of affirming the glory of the Spanish Monarchy during what was in fact a period of decline.

Art historians assume that the picture of the mother of Philip IV, Queen Margarita on Horseback is by an unknown painter, and later corrections were made by Vel�zquez and one of his workshop assistants.

It is probably a fragment of a larger composition, as indicated by other existing and larger versions in the Uffizi, Florence, the Art Galleries, Atlanta and Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

The Uffizi Gallery has another, larger, half-length version of this self-portrait.

The painter’s aristocratic stance carries over into ‘sprezzatura’ or courtly nonchalance, of his brushwork. Two examples: a few dryer strokes at the neck for his linen, and a more charged brush for sword hilt and belt.

It is assumed that Vel�zquez painted his wife Juana Pacheco on this painting.

In 1630 the count-duke of Olivares decided to initiate a lavish program of artistic display by the construction of a new pleasure palace on the eastern border of Madrid which came to be known as the Buen Retiro. Here theatrical plays and spectacles would be staged, tournaments and jousts would be organized, and painting, sculpture, and tapestry would be displayed. Beginning in 1630 with a modest renovation of the royal apartment in San Jer�nimo, the project was expanded in 1632 and again in 1633, culminating in a sizable complex of buildings surrounded by enormous gardens adorned by fountains, alleys and hermitage chapels. Once the structure was finished, Olivares faced with the mammoth problem of decorating the new palace, a problem that was solved by hundreds of pictures from Italy and Flanders and by commissioning as many works from local artists as they could paint. As for the works by royal artists and their disciples, the decoration of the Retiro was the major event of the 1630s and thus is a microcosm of court painting during the decade.

The earliest of Vel�zquez’s contributions to the decoration of the Retiro is the luminous St Anthony Abbot and St Paul the Hermit, his first picture with an extensive landscape background. It was probably commissioned for the Hermitage. This picture shows several scenes from the legend of these saints simultaneously. In the background, St Anthony is asking a centaur the way to the hermit Paul. As he goes on he meets a homed monster with goat’s feet, and on the right he is knocking on the door to the cave. The main scene shows the raven bringing the two saints a loaf of bread from heaven. To the left, we see the closing sequence: two lions are digging a grave for St Paul while St Anthony prays beside his corpse.

Various models have been suggested for this composition, including a woodcut by Albrecht D�rer for the group of figures. The woodcut also shows the raven flying down to bring the hermits a loaf of bread, in the same attitude as in Vel�zquez’s painting. A model for the landscape, of which we have an aerial view, has been traced in the so-called world landscapes of the Flemish artist Joachim Patenier, and the sketch-like dynamics of the brushwork and transparency of the colouring are reminiscent of similar pictures by Rubens.

The detail depicts the raven bringing the two saints a loaf of bread from heaven. The woodcut by Albrecht D�rer, which probably served as a model for this composition, also shows the raven flying down to bring the hermits a loaf of bread, in the same attitude as in Vel�zquez’s painting.

Vel�zquez took up ideas from earlier models that struck him as important and worth studying. In religious compositions such as the painting St Ildefonso Receiving the Chasuble from the Virgin, the spiritual ascetics portrayed by El Greco may well have been such models. With remarkable self-confidence, however, Vel�zquez always transformed the ideas he adopted into his own inimitable style. Its increasing artistic delicacy, his sure touch in exploring the depths of his subject, and a fine sense of composition show the presence of genius beneath the surface of the young artist still learning his craft.

Originally this painting, together with an Immaculate Conception (now in private collection), was in the Carmelite Convent in Seville.

This is a preparatory study of the head for the main figure, Apollo, in The Forge of Vulcan.

Vel�zquez was a pupil in Pacheco’s workshop when he embarked upon his first large work, The Adoration of the Magi. In his early works Vel�zquez was still strongly influenced by his master; these pictures also reveal a marked striving for plasticity in the figures and balance between the different elements of the composition. He painted The Adoration of the Magi in heavy, dark colours and his lack of experience is evident in the representation of the faces. The main characters are thought to be portraits: the young king is a free self-portrait of the artist, while the kneeling king behind him has the features of Pacheco and the Virgin Mary those of Pacheco’s daughter Juana, married to Vel�zquez.

And yet, the painting is more than a mere exercise by an industrious and talented pupil. It is true that he has not conveyed the quality of the textiles in his arrangement of the folds of the garments; the composition is somewhat uncertain and the spatial relations are by no means perfect: yet the picture reveals Vel�zquez’s genius as a portraitist. The Madonna is depicted as a beautiful Andalusian peasant girl, her face glowing with maternal pride, the Infant is well observed, charming with no hint of idealization, and the features of Balthasar are exceptionally lifelike and worthy of note.

In a manner that is always striking and sometimes curiously moving to modern observers, Vel�zquez shows human nature in all its diversity when he presents the gallery of dwarfs and jesters who lived at court and whose task it was to preserve the king from boredom in the midst of routine etiquette.

Under cover of joking, the court jesters or buffoons, in Spanish truhanes, would often tell their lords and masters the home truths openly discussed by the ordinary people. They could move freely in the king’s presence, trying to amuse the naturally melancholic Philip IV with their caustic remarks. To judge by their salaries, their position in society was quite high. Vel�zquez himself, on entering the service of the palace as a court painter, had at first been classed with the royal servants, and as a result shared the life of these truhanes.

Vel�zquez painted a masterly picture of the buffoon Don Crist�bal de Castañeda y Pernia, who was first in rank among the court jesters. He gave himself airs as a great military expert, thus earning the nickname of Barbarroja (Barbarossa or Red-beard). The ambitious buffoon aspired to military roles and he even acted as toreador in the arena although he was ill-fitted for doing it. His red robe is almost Turkish in style, and his head-dress suggests a fool’s cap. He glares fiercely into space, and while he grips the sheath of his sword firmly, the sword itself is held in a relaxed position.

The buffoon’s red robe is almost Turkish in style, and his head-dress suggests a fool’s cap. He glares fiercely into space.

The court jester, posing like an actor, stands in a curiously indeterminate space showing no floor-line. This portrait is revolutionary in that Vel�zquez reduces space to a neutral element in picture-making. Later painters such as Goya and Manet were enthusiastic about this masterpiece, not least for its originally glowing tones of grey in the background, now turned to an unattractive ochre.

One of the tasks required of Vel�zquez, the court painter, was the painting of altarpieces, though to a lesser extent than painting portraits. The Coronation of the Virgin was painted around 1645, possibly for the queen’s oratory in the Alcazar in Madrid. Angelic putti carry the virginal Madonna up to heaven on clouds; Christ and God the Father hold a wreath of roses over her head, and the dove of the Holy Ghost hovers above her in an aureole of light. The glory of the coronation of the Mother of God and her perfect features are signs of her virginity. The virginal face of the Madonna reflects the emotions aroused in Spain between 1613 and 1620 by the postulated Immaculate Conception of the Virgin. In this context Pacheco encouraged painters to create emphatically youthful depictions of Mary.

Angelic putti carry the virginal Madonna up to heaven on clouds.

Philip IV succeeded his father, Philip III of Spain, in 1621, and, for the first 22 years of his reign, Philip’s valido, or chief minister, was the Conde-Duque de Olivares, who took the spread of the Thirty Years’ War as an opportunity not only for resuming hostilities against the Dutch at the end of the Twelve Years’ Truce of 1609 (1621) but also for an ambitious attempt to restore Spanish hegemony in Europe, in close alliance with the imperial branch of the Habsburg dynasty.

Vel�zquez’ most impressive equestrian portrait, painted in 1634, did not depict any member of the royal family but took as its subject Count-Duke of Olivares on Horseback. At that point in time, Olivares, by now the most powerful man in the kingdom, sometimes even more powerful than the king, could describe himself by the title of Count-Duke. He expressed his sense of his own dignity by having himself painted on horseback, an honour usually accorded only to ruling heads of state, and Vel�zquez constructed a Baroque equestrian portrait of extremely bold composition.

Olivares, famous for his horsemanship, is shown as a field-marshal with a plumed hat, a cuirass adorned with gold and a baton; seated on his mount, he is leaping down from a height into the depths below, and his figure fills the entire breadth of the canvas. The viewer looks diagonally upwards at the horseman, whose head is turned well to one side, so that he himself is looking down on the viewer from above in a lordly manner. The magnificent chestnut horse has its head turned the other way and is looking down into the depths of the picture, where the smoke of fires and gunpowder rises on a wide plain, and the turmoil of battle is show raging in miniature. Despite theories that have often been put forward, this picture does not necessarily show any particular battle; instead, it alludes in general to the military skill of the man who led the king’s armies from triumph to triumph.

The bottom left corner of the picture shows an unfolded empty sheet of white paper. Curiously, although he usually failed to sign and date his paintings, Vel�zquez often added such blank pieces of paper to his pictures but wrote nothing on them.

Dwarfs, fools and jesters were present in large numbers at the Court of Philip IV. They were maintained by the King according to a tradition extending back well into the Middle Ages. The tradition was motivated by charity, but many ‘fools’ came to be appreciated for their wit, arousing great affection and sometimes achieving great fame. Because they were not taken seriously, they were licenced to parody or flout the etiquette with which courtiers and royalty had to conform, which seems to have been especially appreciated at the rigid Court of Philip IV.

Vel�zquez has used a variety of subtle devices in portraying them: particularly interesting is the way the light flickers uncertainly over Calabacillas’ grimace, suggesting his poor vision. Here Vel�zquez anticipates, or may have influenced, Goya’s techique of 160 years later.

Vel�zquez painted the likenesses of some of the dwarfs of the Spanish court who were, in the words of Carl Justi, ‘loved and treated as dogs’. These unfortunate cripples, sometimes weak-minded but sometimes wise, often attached themselves to the courts in the Middle Ages and later; there they found shelter in return for their services as court jesters, and they had to endure the rude remarks and practical jokes of the courtiers. Their feelings as human beings were generally ignored, but the portrait of the dwarf Sebasti�n de Morra (it was a form of mockery to give the dwarfs such grandiose names) is one of the most penetrating character studies ever made by the master.

Although the dwarf Don Sebasti�n de Morra is portrayed in full figure, he is not standing in a self-confident pose or elegantly seated on a chair, but is sitting on the bare earth with his feet stretched out in front of him. This low position not only shows up the sumptuous clothing for the clownish apparel it is, but also heightens the intended effect: the court fool is at the mercy of the spectator. Such pictorial devices reveal the voyeurism with which the royal rulers made these people the objects of their shameless whimsy, caprice and power. At the same time, however, the artist is also making another statement: this court fool is giving nothing away, neither a smile, nor any buffoonery. Immobile, scrutinizing and impenetrable, his dark eyes are fixed on the spectator, who somehow feels caught out by such a gaze and turns away.

Vel�zquez’s greatest achievement as a portrait painter was certainly his highly pictorial portrait of Pope Innocent X, executed during his second visit to Rome; but already in this picture of the dwarf, especially in the expression of the eyes, there is evidence of the great gifts with which this artist was endowed.

One of the most famous of the paintings by Vel�zquez, and an example of his great mythological works, is The Fable of Arachne (Las Hilanderas), also known as The Tapestry Weavers or The Spinners. It was painted not for the king but for a private patron.

The mythological story of the contest between the goddess Athena (Minerva to the Romans) and the mortal woman Arachne was perhaps told best by the Roman poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses (Book VI). According to Ovid, Arachne lived in the country of Lydia (which had a legendary reputation for producing some of the most splendid textiles in the ancient world), where she matured into one of the finest weavers ever known. Arachne was in fact so adept at weaving that she became arrogant, and claimed that her ability rivaled that of the goddess Athena. Athena, as the patron deity of weavers and quite an accomplished weaver herself, immediately took notice of Arachne, and travelled to Lydia in order to confront the boastful woman. There the goddess assumed the guise of an old peasant, and gently warned Arachne not to compare her talents to those of an immortal; Arachne merely dismissed this reproach, and so Athena was compelled to accept the mortal woman’s challenge.

They would each compete by creating a tapestry. Athena wove her tapestry with images that foretold the fate of humans who compared themselves with deities, while Arachne’s weaving told of the loves of the gods. Such was Arachne’s skill that her work equalled that of the goddess, and Athena, overwhelmed by anger, struck the hapless woman repeatedly. Terrified, Arachne hung herself, but Athena transformed the woman into a spider who quickly scurried off. Thus, this tale explains the spider’s ability to weave its web.

In its composition, the artist looks back to his bodegones, where two different areas and two planes of reality balance each other. The everyday scene in the foreground shows a plainly furnished room where women are at work spinning. Sunlight falling in from above conjures up a complex range of colours. On the left, an elderly woman is at the spinning wheel, while the young woman seated to the right is winding yarn. One of the figures of naked youths by Michelangelo on the roof of the Sistine Chapel has been identified as the model for her attitude. Vel�zquez conveys their industry with brilliant immediacy, seeming to mingle the hum of their mills with the shifts of colour in the light. Three other women are bringing more wool and sorting through the remnants. The scene may reflect the disposition of the Royal Tapestry Factory of St Elizabeth in Madrid.

There is a second room in the background, in an alcove reached by steps. It is flooded with light and contains several elegantly dressed women. The woman on the left wearing an antique helmet and with her arm raised is a figure of Athena. Opposite her - either really in the room, or part of the picture in the tapestry on the back wall? - stands the young Arachne, who has committed the sacrilegious act of comparing her skill in weaving with the goddess’s. She has begun their competition with a tapestry showing one of the love affairs of Jupiter, the rape of Europa. Vel�zquez borrowed the theme of this tapestry from a famous picture by Titian, also extant in a copy by Rubens, to show his artistic veneration for the Venetian master.

Around 1636 Rubens had painted a version of the same story for the Torre de la Parada, showing the punishment of Arachne, when she was turned into a spider. Vel�zquez omits this detail, instead treating the rivals almost as equals. By comparison with the weight of symbolism in the background scene, he shows the simple work of the women in the foreground with monumental dignity; it is the basis of the technique without which no goddess could practise her arts. This interpretation is still relevant if Vel�zquez has in fact represented the figures of Athena (now disguised, but with her shapely bare leg indicating her timeless beauty) and Arachne a second time in the figures of the old woman and the young woman in the foreground. Here, at least, Vel�zquez has transferred mythology to everyday reality. However, there is a whole series of possible meanings beneath the surface of this painting, and scholars are still puzzling over some of them to this day.

The canvas was probably damaged by a fire in the Alc�zar (1734) and an upper section was added.