Diego Velázquez

I

Introduction

Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), Spanish painter, the country's greatest Baroque artist, who, with Francisco de Goya and El Greco, forms the great triumvirate of Spanish painters.

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was born in Seville on June 6, 1599, the oldest of six children; both his parents were from the minor nobility. Between 1611 and 1617 the young Velázquez worked as an apprentice to Francisco Pacheco, a Mannerist painter of Seville who was also the author of an important treatise, El Arte de la Pintura (The Art of Painting, 1649), and who became Velázquez's father-in-law. During his years as an apprentice Velázquez absorbed the most popular contemporaneous styles of painting, derived, in part, from both Flemish and Italian realism.

II

Early Works

Velázquez's early works, executed between about 1617 and 1623, fall into three categories—the bodegón, (everyday subjects combined with still life), portraits, and religious scenes. Many of his earliest paintings show a strong naturalist bias, as in The Meal (c. 1617, Hermitage, St Petersburg), a bodegón which may have been his first work as an independent master after passing the examination of the Guild of St Luke. In his bodegónes, such as Water Seller of Seville (c. 1619-1620, Apsley House, London), the masterly effects of light and shadow, as well as the direct observation of nature, make inevitable a comparison with the work of Caravaggio. For his religious paintings, images of simple piety, Velázquez used as models people drawn from the streets of Seville, as Pacheco states in his biography of Velázquez. In Adoration of the Magi (1619, Prado, Madrid), for example, the biblical figures are portraits of members of his own family; a self-portrait is included as well.

Velázquez was also well acquainted with members of the intellectual circles of Seville. Pacheco was the director of an informal humanist academy; at its meetings the young artist was introduced to such people as the great poet Luis de Góngora y Argote, whose portrait (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) he executed in 1622 . Such contact was important for Velázquez's later work on mythological and Classical themes.

III

Appointment as Court Painter

In 1622 Velázquez made his first trip to Madrid, ostensibly (as Pacheco tells it) to see the paintings in the royal collections, but more likely in an unsuccessful search for a position as court painter. In 1623, however, he returned to the capital and, after executing a portrait (1623, Prado) of the king, was named official painter to Philip IV. The portrait was the first among many such sober, direct depictions of the king, the royal family, and members of the court. Indeed, throughout the later 1620s, Velázquez dedicated most of his efforts to portraiture. Mythological subjects would at times occupy his attention, as in Bacchus or The Drinkers (1628-1629, Prado). This scene of revelry in an open field, in which the god of wine is shown drinking with ruffians, testifies to the artist's continued interest in realism.

IV

Trip to Italy

In 1628 Peter Paul Rubens came to the court at Madrid on a diplomatic mission. Among the few painters with whom he associated was Velázquez. Although the great Flemish master did not have a direct impact on the style of the younger painter, their conversations almost certainly inspired Velázquez to visit the art collections in Italy that were so much admired by Rubens. In August 1629 Velázquez left Barcelona for Genoa and spent most of the next two years travelling in Italy. From Genoa he proceeded to Milan, Venice, Florence, and Rome, returning to Spain from Naples in January 1631. In the course of his journey he closely studied both the art of the Renaissance and contemporaneous painting. Several of the works executed during his travels attest to his absorption of these styles; a notable example is Joseph and His Brothers (1630, El Escorial, near Madrid), which combines a Michelangelesque sculptural quality with the chiaroscuro (light-and-shadow techniques) of such Italian masters as Guercino and Giovanni Lanfranco.