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(Seville 1599 - Madrid 1660)
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, a Spanish painter and a great exponent of Spanish painting, is considered one of the greatest painters in all of history.
He was the firstborn son of Juan Rodríguez de Silva and Jerónima Velázquez, both natives of Seville. Juan Rodríguez de Silva was apparently a nobleman of limited means, whose parents had come to settle in Seville from Oporto. With the freedom that existed at that time in the use of surnames, the painter habitually used and was known by the names of Diego Velázquez, Diego Velázquez de Silva, and, at the end of his life, Diego de Silva Velázquez.
In September 1611, the contract was signed by which Velázquez was entrusted as an apprentice to Francisco Pacheco, one of the most prominent painters of contemporary Seville, in whose workshop he would remain for five years. The boy's exceptional talents were soon noticed by Pacheco, who took great care in his education and, as he states in his book *Arte de la pintura*, “moved by his virtue, cleanliness, and good qualities, and by the hopes of his natural and great genius,” gave him his daughter as a wife. From the marriage of Velázquez and Juana Pacheco (April 1618), two daughters were born, one of whom, Francisca (born in 1619), would marry Velázquez's best disciple, Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo.
In March 1617, Velázquez passed the exam before the overseeing mayors of the painters' guild of Seville, which was necessary to practice this art independently in the city. The production of Velázquez during his Sevillian period, which extends until 1623, represented a decisive change in the course of the local school, which in the 17th century would become one of the most outstanding European pictorial centers.
With Velázquez, the Baroque realism burst onto the scene in Andalusia, a trend that would be followed in various ways by his contemporaries active in Seville (mainly Zurbarán and Alonso Cano), and which would also have repercussions in certain stylistic accommodations seen in older painters. This new orientation marked by Velázquez is fully evident from his earliest known canvases. It brings together different factors of artistic culture, among which the reception of Caravaggist influence is fundamental.
It should also be emphasized the "popular realist" inclination that had been manifesting in the field of literature: some Sevillian paintings by Velázquez seem almost like illustrations of picaresque literature. However, regarding these themes, Velázquez does not indulge in the comic or the amusing; his approach reflects a peculiar ethical bias, a respect for human dignity and individuality that would inform all his later art, and which gives some of his seemingly inconsequential profane scenes, featuring protagonists of humble origins, a moral seriousness comparable to that of a religious episode: The Water Carrier of Seville (Wellington Museum, London), which presents the cup of water with the solemnity of a sacred rite, constitutes the most eminent example of this attitude.
The young Velázquez's strong preference for "popular" themes is significantly revealed in paintings such as The Dinner at Meaux, where the evangelical anecdote is relegated to the background, described with tiny figures, to place the still life and the work of the servants in the kitchen in the foreground; it is a narrative inversion that Velázquez had seen in pieces of uncertain attribution.
By the age of twenty, Velázquez was already the most valuable and promising pictorial personality on the peninsula.
Aware of his potential, in April 1622 he traveled to Madrid to portray Philip IV, who had just ascended to the throne. From this date, he established his residence in Madrid, and his activity would henceforth be entirely devoted to serving the crown. Velázquez's career in the royal circle would culminate shortly before his death with his appointment as a knight of Santiago (1659).
The royal collection, which was the richest in Europe, and the two trips he made to Italy allowed Velázquez to acquire a deep knowledge of past art, as well as the works of Rubens and many other notable painters of his time.
From this extensive experience, it would be the Venetian painting of the 1500s that would have the greatest consequences for the evolution of his style, which would develop as a tenacious and continuously refined conquest of reality.
The work of Velázquez in his early years in Madrid includes court portraits that adhere in their composition to the traditional models of Spanish court portraiture inherited from the previous century (Philip IV, Prado, Metropolitan Museum of New York; Infante Carlos, Prado; Count-Duke of Olivares, Hispanic Society of New York, São Paulo Museum), in addition to other portraits such as that of Góngora. The painter's progress regarding compositional articulation, palette refinement, and atmospheric suggestion became clearer in the first of his portraits of jesters (Calabazas, England) and in religious scenes such as The Dinner at Meaux (Metropolitan Museum, New York), Christ after the Flagellation Contemplated by the Christian Soul (National Gallery, London), and The Temptation of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Cathedral of Orihuela).
In his first trip to Italy, which seems to have been simply for study, although he may have performed some diplomatic mission, Velázquez visited Genoa, Milan, Venice, Ferrara, Cento, Rome, and Naples.
The activity of Velázquez in the 1930s and 1940s increasingly focused on portraiture, in accordance with his own vocation and the demands of his position as court painter. His portraits are images of incomparable naturalness, perfectly balancing the inquiry into the individual being with elegance and simplicity of composition, capturing character and chromatic harmony. The catalog of Velázquez's portraits from these two decades includes various versions of the king and members of the royal family, both on horseback and on foot.
His religious painting is represented during this time by four preserved examples in the Prado Museum: the Crucifixion, The Coronation of the Virgin, Saint Anthony the Abbot, and Saint Paul the Hermit.
In the last decade of his life, the demanding tasks of palace steward did not prevent him from carrying out works of very high rank; Mercury and Argus (Prado), The Infanta María Teresa (Vienna), The Infanta Margarita (Vienna), The Infante Felipe Próspero (Vienna) - in which the technique of free and disjointed brushstrokes enhances the decorative sumptuousness of the whole, while in the bust portrait of Philip IV he completely dispensed with representative adornments to focus on the moral analysis of the man, in a unique example of the demystification of an absolute monarch by his court painter. The painting Las Meninas (Prado), painted in 1656, a synthesis of group portrait, genre scene, and interior study with complex light sources, marks the supreme level of Velázquez's art.
He died on August 6, 1660, shortly after returning from his mission as steward during the meeting of Philip IV and Louis XIV on the Isle of the Phantoms.
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, a Spanish painter and a great exponent of Spanish painting, is considered one of the greatest painters in all of history.
He was the firstborn son of Juan Rodríguez de Silva and Jerónima Velázquez, both natives of Seville. Juan Rodríguez de Silva was apparently a nobleman of limited means, whose parents had come to settle in Seville from Oporto. With the freedom that existed at that time in the use of surnames, the painter habitually used and was known by the names of Diego Velázquez, Diego Velázquez de Silva, and, at the end of his life, Diego de Silva Velázquez.
In September 1611, the contract was signed by which Velázquez was entrusted as an apprentice to Francisco Pacheco, one of the most prominent painters of contemporary Seville, in whose workshop he would remain for five years. The boy's exceptional talents were soon noticed by Pacheco, who took great care in his education and, as he states in his book *Arte de la pintura*, “moved by his virtue, cleanliness, and good qualities, and by the hopes of his natural and great genius,” gave him his daughter as a wife. From the marriage of Velázquez and Juana Pacheco (April 1618), two daughters were born, one of whom, Francisca (born in 1619), would marry Velázquez's best disciple, Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo.
In March 1617, Velázquez passed the exam before the overseeing mayors of the painters' guild of Seville, which was necessary to practice this art independently in the city. The production of Velázquez during his Sevillian period, which extends until 1623, represented a decisive change in the course of the local school, which in the 17th century would become one of the most outstanding European pictorial centers.
With Velázquez, the Baroque realism burst onto the scene in Andalusia, a trend that would be followed in various ways by his contemporaries active in Seville (mainly Zurbarán and Alonso Cano), and which would also have repercussions in certain stylistic accommodations seen in older painters. This new orientation marked by Velázquez is fully evident from his earliest known canvases. It brings together different factors of artistic culture, among which the reception of Caravaggist influence is fundamental.
It should also be emphasized the "popular realist" inclination that had been manifesting in the field of literature: some Sevillian paintings by Velázquez seem almost like illustrations of picaresque literature. However, regarding these themes, Velázquez does not indulge in the comic or the amusing; his approach reflects a peculiar ethical bias, a respect for human dignity and individuality that would inform all his later art, and which gives some of his seemingly inconsequential profane scenes, featuring protagonists of humble origins, a moral seriousness comparable to that of a religious episode: The Water Carrier of Seville (Wellington Museum, London), which presents the cup of water with the solemnity of a sacred rite, constitutes the most eminent example of this attitude.
The young Velázquez's strong preference for "popular" themes is significantly revealed in paintings such as The Dinner at Meaux, where the evangelical anecdote is relegated to the background, described with tiny figures, to place the still life and the work of the servants in the kitchen in the foreground; it is a narrative inversion that Velázquez had seen in pieces of uncertain attribution.
By the age of twenty, Velázquez was already the most valuable and promising pictorial personality on the peninsula.
Aware of his potential, in April 1622 he traveled to Madrid to portray Philip IV, who had just ascended to the throne. From this date, he established his residence in Madrid, and his activity would henceforth be entirely devoted to serving the crown. Velázquez's career in the royal circle would culminate shortly before his death with his appointment as a knight of Santiago (1659).
The royal collection, which was the richest in Europe, and the two trips he made to Italy allowed Velázquez to acquire a deep knowledge of past art, as well as the works of Rubens and many other notable painters of his time.
From this extensive experience, it would be the Venetian painting of the 1500s that would have the greatest consequences for the evolution of his style, which would develop as a tenacious and continuously refined conquest of reality.
The work of Velázquez in his early years in Madrid includes court portraits that adhere in their composition to the traditional models of Spanish court portraiture inherited from the previous century (Philip IV, Prado, Metropolitan Museum of New York; Infante Carlos, Prado; Count-Duke of Olivares, Hispanic Society of New York, São Paulo Museum), in addition to other portraits such as that of Góngora. The painter's progress regarding compositional articulation, palette refinement, and atmospheric suggestion became clearer in the first of his portraits of jesters (Calabazas, England) and in religious scenes such as The Dinner at Meaux (Metropolitan Museum, New York), Christ after the Flagellation Contemplated by the Christian Soul (National Gallery, London), and The Temptation of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Cathedral of Orihuela).
In his first trip to Italy, which seems to have been simply for study, although he may have performed some diplomatic mission, Velázquez visited Genoa, Milan, Venice, Ferrara, Cento, Rome, and Naples.
The activity of Velázquez in the 1930s and 1940s increasingly focused on portraiture, in accordance with his own vocation and the demands of his position as court painter. His portraits are images of incomparable naturalness, perfectly balancing the inquiry into the individual being with elegance and simplicity of composition, capturing character and chromatic harmony. The catalog of Velázquez's portraits from these two decades includes various versions of the king and members of the royal family, both on horseback and on foot.
His religious painting is represented during this time by four preserved examples in the Prado Museum: the Crucifixion, The Coronation of the Virgin, Saint Anthony the Abbot, and Saint Paul the Hermit.
In the last decade of his life, the demanding tasks of palace steward did not prevent him from carrying out works of very high rank; Mercury and Argus (Prado), The Infanta María Teresa (Vienna), The Infanta Margarita (Vienna), The Infante Felipe Próspero (Vienna) - in which the technique of free and disjointed brushstrokes enhances the decorative sumptuousness of the whole, while in the bust portrait of Philip IV he completely dispensed with representative adornments to focus on the moral analysis of the man, in a unique example of the demystification of an absolute monarch by his court painter. The painting Las Meninas (Prado), painted in 1656, a synthesis of group portrait, genre scene, and interior study with complex light sources, marks the supreme level of Velázquez's art.
He died on August 6, 1660, shortly after returning from his mission as steward during the meeting of Philip IV and Louis XIV on the Isle of the Phantoms.
