Diego Velázquez (1599–1660) pioneered new ways to use color and light in his paintings and created striking portraits of peasants, popes, and members of the Spanish royal family. He is considered one of the most influential figures in the baroque period of European art, a period that lasted from the seventeenth into the eighteenth centuries.
Velázquez’s most famous works include The Water Carrier of Seville (c. 1619), a portrait of Pope Innocent X (1650), and Las Meninas, or The Maids of Honor, a giant portrait of a Spanish princess and her courtiers that he completed in 1656.
Born in Seville, Velázquez entered art school when he was eleven and produced several of his most famous early works, including The Water Carrier, before age twenty. The paintings caught the attention of officials in Madrid, who summoned the young artist to the court of King Philip IV (1605–1665) in 1622.
Philip IV, who presided over Spain as it reached the height of its imperial power in Europe and the Americas, would become Velázquez’s lifelong patron. Velázquez went on to paint hundreds of canvases of the king, his political allies, and his family, culminating with Las Meninas.
Las Meninas, which currently hangs in the Prado Museum in Madrid, is considered by many critics to be Velázquez’s masterpiece. The complex, enigmatic painting shows the princess in a dimly lit room with her father, the king, peering in from an open doorway. Velázquez himself appears in the shadows at the side of the painting, brush in hand, although it is unclear whether the artist in the portrait is painting the princess or another subject. The elaborate use of lighting and shadow in the painting is considered characteristic of the baroque style.
In addition to painting Spanish royalty, Velázquez made portraits of poets, servants, and religious figures. He traveled to Italy twice and developed a friendship with the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640). Velázquez was knighted shortly before his death at age sixty-one.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- The main figure in Las Meninas is Princess Margarita (1651–1673), the youngest daughter of Philip IV. She married the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I (1640–1705), when she was fifteen years old and died at age twenty-one after several miscarriages.
- Velázquez painted more than forty portraits of his patron, Philip IV.
- The term baroque is derived from a word in Spanish and Portuguese meaning “irregular,” “contorted,” or “grotesque.” Art from the period is typically richly detailed, but lacks the concern for absolute realism that was shown in earlier generations. It is often associated with the Counter- Reformation of the seventeenth century, when the Roman Catholic Church regained or strengthened its power in many parts of Europe and supported the artists of the movement.
