VELÁZQUEZ, DIEGO RODRÍGUEZ DE SILVA Y. -
Painter, b. in Seville on 6 June 1599 and d. in Madrid on 7 Aug. 1660.
A pupil of the colourist and realist Francisco de Herrera the Elder and then of his father-in-law Francisco Pacheco, V. soon won successes and honours in Madrid and, after the portrait of Philip II, was appointed court painter, a post he held for about 40 years. On a first journey to Italy (1629-31), he visited Genoa, Milan, Venice, Loreto, with long stays in Rome and Naples; at Ferrara he left a self-portrait of his with the cardinal legate Giulio Sacchetti (Capitoline Gallery), at Cento he had useful stylistic contacts with Guercino, and at Naples he executed a fine replica of his famous painting The Drinkers (National Museum). During a later journey to Italy (1649-51) V. painted the celebrated portrait of Innocent X (Doria Gallery in Rome) and two highly singular views of the Villa Medici, which anticipate Impressionist manners. The dominant prerogative in the exceptional painterly temperament of this master is the uninterrupted and flowing realistic vein, to which the study and assimilation of the manners of Rubens and of the direct Italian Caravaggisti, such as G. B. Caracciolo and Borgianni, undoubtedly contributed, but even more so his love for the Venetians of the sixteenth century and above all Titian, of whom in several respects V. may be called a congenial follower. In his output three successive and evolutionary phases have been distinguished: the first, youthful, up to about his thirtieth year, culminating in the above-mentioned Drinkers (or Triumph of Bacchus) in the Prado and in the Crucifix in the same Museum; the second, covering the five years 1634-39, in which the most prestigious portraits emerge, executed at the Madrid Court, including those of the buffoons, the panoramic Boar Hunt (National Gallery, London) and the Surrender of Breda or The Lances (Prado Museum); the third, running from 1640 onwards, which boasts other highly characteristic works, such as the figures of Aesop, Menippus and certain dwarfs, the picaresque scene Mercury and Argus and the more complex ones: The Spinners and Las Meninas (all in the Prado Museum). But chronology, in V.'s work, is of very relative importance. More useful for the purpose of defining its creative nature is the examination of the attitudes and means assumed by his deep-rooted, integral realism, not only in immediate contact with everyday reality, but in the courtly or celebratory sphere, in the historical sphere and within the ambit of sacred narrative. If at times, as in the Forge of Vulcan (Prado Museum), V. proves little suited to raising anatomical and environmental notations to the plane of myth, in almost all the occasions proposed to him or chosen by his sure instinct as a poet of colour, he displays a suppleness and transfigurative capacity that has very few parallels in universal art from Giotto onwards. This may explain how, in the absence of inclinations towards the transcendent and towards asceticism, certain of his works on religious subjects are to be numbered among the highest of the European seventeenth century and without the slightest trace of Baroque spirit. One recalls, besides the above-mentioned Crucifix, with the face half covered by the falling hair, the Adoration of the Shepherds and Christ at the Column (both in the National Gallery, London), the Coronation of the Virgin, and the Conversation of St. Anthony and St. Paul the Hermits (both in the Prado Museum). - See plate CXX.
