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ISBN: 978-1-78160-637-7
Diego
Velázquez
1. Self-Portrait, ca.1640.
Oil on canvas, 45.8 x 38 cm.
Museo de Bellas Artes de San Pío V, Valencia.
Spanish art flourished and reached its highest peak in the seventeenth century. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, El Greco’s art shone forth brilliantly in Toledo. He was a master, uniting both the Byzantine and Italian heritage, who found a spiritual milieu for his religious, philosophical and moral convictions on the Iberian Peninsula. In Naples, Jusepe de Ribera, one of the staunchest followers of Tenebrism, was renowned. His art was filled with true Hispanic passion and religious tension. In Seville, Francisco de Zurbanin, and later, Bartolome Esteban Murillo, decorated numerous monasteries and churches with religious canvases. Velázquez holds a special place in this constellation of great masters on account of the unusual versatility of his art. This is reflected in both the content and the stylistic originality of his work.
Diego Rodríguez de Silva Velázquez, a native of Seville, the capital of Andalusia, was christened on 6 June 1599. His parents, Juan Rodríguez de Silva and Doña Geronima Velázquez, belonged to the minor nobility but were far from wealthy. According to the Andalusian custom, the son adopted his mother’s surname. At the beginning of the seventeenth century Seville was a wealthy trading port. From here, ships set out to the New World and returned with untold treasures. Seville was the leading religious centre of Andalusia with more than forty monasteries and convents, numerous churches, religious fraternities, hospitals and alms houses. But the cathedral, of course, surpassed them all, being a veritable treasure-house of art. When he was ten, Velázquez began his training with the Sevillian painter, Francisco Herrera the Elder. He was only there for a short time however, since in December 1616, his father approached Francisco Pacheco with regard to his son’s training. Pacheco was a respected artist in Seville who had obtained important commissions, although he demonstrated no particular talent. His merit in regard to Velázquez’s education lay in the fact that he, better than any other, was able to acquaint his pupil with the higher accomplishments of European culture.
From the 1560s, the city boasted an “academy” of which Pacheco’s uncle, a canon of the Seville cathedra and who also bore the name Francisco Pacheco, was a member.
With regard to the Italian Renaissance, Francisco Pacheco was a great admirer of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian and other famous masters. Pacheco devoted many years of his life to the writing of the book Arte de la Pintura. One of Pacheco’s principal ideas — the nobility and virtue of the art of painting — played a key role in the formation of Velázquez’s profound consciousness as a painter. While eulogizing the classical art of the Renaissance, Pacheco nonetheless also paid tribute to the new realistic trend emerging in painting.
2. The Musical Trio, ca.1617-1618.
Oil on canvas, 87 x 110 cm.
Staatliche Museum, Berlin.
3. An old woman cooking eggs, ca. 1618.
Oil on canvas, 100.5 x 119.5 cm.
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.
4. The Investiture of St Ildefonso with the Chasuble, ca.1620.
Oil on canvas, 166 x 120 cm.
Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes, Seville.
5. The Adoration of the Magi, 1619.
Oil on canvas, 204 x 126.5 cm.
Prado Museum, Madrid.
6. Tavern scene with Christ at Emnaus, ca.1620.
Oil on canvas, 55 x 118 cm. National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.
In Italy, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, who rapidly gained many admirers, was the movement’s principal founder. It is not known which of Caravaggio’s or his followers’ works found their way to Seville in the 1610s, but it seems fairly certain that they did appear there. It would otherwise be difficult to account for Velázquez’s early works, which clearly betray the influence of Tenebrism, the use of striking effects of lighting, especially strong shadow, typical of Caravaggio.
We can also see the significance of the years Velázquez spent with Pacheco. Intensive studies probably began in 1612, since Pacheco himself wrote that Velázquez’s training lasted five years. On 14 March 1617, Velázquez took the examination to become a master painter and received the right to work independently. A year later, on 23 April 1618, he married Pacheco’s daughter, Juana de Miranda, who was then sixteen. The following year their daughter Francisca was born, followed in 1621 by another daughter, Ignacia.
The production of religious works of art was the principal task of Sevillian painters, and Velázquez was naturally trained in this field. Already in his apprentice years, however, he exhibited an unusual proclivity for the depiction of real life. Pacheco recounted how Velázquez specially hired a peasant boy so that, observing him crying at one moment and laughing the next, he could make sketches of him.
7. Kitchen scene with Christ in the house of Martha and Mary, 1618.
Oil on canvas, 60 x 103.5 cm.
The Trustees of the National Gallery, London.
Towards the end of the sixteenth century, paintings with subjects taken from daily existence and still lifes began to appear in Spain — at first by Dutch and Italian artists, and subsequently by Spanish painters as well. From his first years as an artist, Velázquez took a great interest in everyday scenes. The earliest of his surviving works — The Musical Trio (ca 1617; Gemäldegalerie, Berlin-Dahlem) — is a genre piece, depicting a group of people enjoying themselves at a feast.
Large figures loom in the foreground, while the action takes place in a dark room, illuminated by a narrowly directed source of light. Under such lighting, the three-dimensional forms stand out particularly sharply, creating an illusion of tangibility. The colour range is composed of hues of yellow and brown. The still life arranged on the table is accorded much attention. The smiling boy on the left is evidently the one mentioned by Pacheco. Paintings of this kind came to be known as bodeganes (from the Spanish word bodega “tavern”). Subsequently the term bodegón was extended to other depictions of a secular nature — kitchens and still lifes.
The work An Old Woman Cooking Eggs is dated to 1618. Similar depictions of kitchens occur in Italian paintings of the period, such as, for example, Interior of a Kitchen by Pensegnante de Saraceni (earlier attributed to Caravaggio) in the Galleria Corsini in Florence.
8. The water seller of Seville, ca.1620.
Oil on canvas, 106.7 x 81 cm.
The Wellington Museum, Apsley Honse, London.
9. St Paul, ca.1619.
Oil on canvas, 98 x 78 cm.
Museo de Arte de Cataluña, Barcelona.