440. Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), Spanish,

Portrait of King Philip IV, c. 1623-1624.

Oil on canvas, 61.6 x 48.2 cm. Meadows Museum,

Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

 

 

Diego Velázquez

(1599 Sevilla – 1660 Madrid)

 

Diego Velázquez was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period. At age twenty-four, Velázquez made his first trip to Madrid with his teacher, Francisco Pacheco. Quickly, he qualified as a master painter. King Philip IV noticed his genius and appointed him court painter in 1627. Shortly afterward the artist befriended Rubens in Madrid. He developed a more realistic approach to religious art in which figures are naturalistic portraits rather than depicted in an idealistic style. His use of chiaroscuro is reminiscent of Caravaggio’s works. Velázquez made at least two trips to Rome to buy Renaissance and Neoclassical art for the King. In Rome, he joined the Academy of St. Luke in 1650 and was knighted into the order of Santiago in 1658. His large commissioned work, Surrender of Breda (c. 1634), shows the defeat of the Dutch at the hands of the Spanish, and glorified the military triumph of Philip’s reign. The artist painted Pope Innocent x (1650) during his second trip to Rome, most likely recalling similar works by Raphael and Titian. This portrait is considered one of the greatest masterpieces of portraiture in the history of art, so realistic that the Pope himself would have said, “troppo vero”. He mastered the art of portraiture because he looked beyond external trappings into the human mystery beneath his subjects, as evidenced in his remarkable series of dwarfs, who were present in many royal courts at that time. He depicted their humanity instead of doing caricatures. His later works were more spontaneous, but still disciplined. The culmination of his career is his masterwork, Las Meninas (1656). It is indeed one of the most complex essays in portraiture. Velázquez is acknowledged to be the most important Spanish painter of his century. He influenced major painters such as Goya and Manet.