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Velázquez, Diego Rodríguez de
Silva y
(1599-1660)
Spanish painter
Born in S
EVILLE
, the son of a lawyer,
Velázquez was apprenticed successively to
two well-known Spanish painters of his
day, Francisco de Herrera the elder and
F
RANCISCO
P
ACHECO
(who later became
both his father-in-law and his biographer).
During his early years as an artist Velázquez
concentrated on religious and genre
themes. In 1622 he moved to M
ADRID
where he benefited from the patronage of
the chief minister, O
LIVARES
, and soon
became court painter to P
HILIP
IV. Many of
his best-known paintings were of Olivares
and other courtiers and of the king and his
family. For more than 30 years Velázquez
occupied a privileged and honored place in
the service of Philip IV, being granted peri-
ods of study and work in Italy (1629-31
and 1649-50). During the latter visit he
acted as the king's agent in the selection
and purchase of large numbers of Italian
masterpieces for the adornment of the
royal palaces. Velázquez also received many
honors, including membership in the Order
of Santiago and appointment as chamber-
lain (with administrative duties that some-
times interfered in later years with his
artistic activities).
Velázquez was acknowledged in his
own time as the unrivaled master of virtu-
ally every field of painting, including por-
traits, religious subjects, scenes of everyday
live, landscapes, and occasionally mytho-
logical figures. Influenced in his earliest
days by certain contemporary Spanish
painters and perhaps by the Italian Cara-
vaggio, and later benefiting from the
advice of Rubens and examining the work
of Titian and Tintoretto during his Italian
sojourn, Velázquez transcended all of
these influences, having some imitators
but no equals. His technique became freer
and more impressionistic in his mature
years, and his handling of color, even
more subtle.
Among his most applauded paintings are
those of Philip IV, which sympathetically
portray the aging of a monarch who was his
patron and friend over the decades and of
Pope Innocent X who gave Velázquez every
assistance during the latter's Roman resi-
dence. Among these and other paintings
that have won the particular praise of critics
over the centuries, undoubtedly Velázquez's
most remarkable achievement is the mas-
sive canvas known as
Las meninas
(The
maids of honor, 1656). The viewer is trans-
ported into the artist's studio, where a royal
princess and her ladies in waiting are in the
foreground, but the true focus of the paint-
ing is the king and queen, reflected in a
mirror while Velázquez himself is observed
working on his canvas. In everything from
its coloring to its technical skill and the
sheer creativity of the artist's approach, the
painting deserves its reputation as one of
the enduring achievements of Spanish artis-
tic genius.
Ironically, when the government sought
to give Velázquez the ultimate honor of a
grandiose tomb to mark the 400th anniver-
sary of his birth in 1999, his actual burial
place could not be located. Velázquez was
therefore allowed to rest in peace, and a
more appropriate honor was bestowed
upon his memory by creating the Velázquez
Prize as an artistic counterpart to the Cer-
vantes Prize for literary distinction. Thus
the greatest painter and the greatest writer
of Spain's Golden Age stand together in the
pantheon of history.
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