The World of Velazquez: 1599-1660 (1969) by Dale Brown

One of the greatest Spanish painters of all time, Diego Valazquez served at the court of Philip IV (r. 1621-1665), a man six years his junior, for four decades. He came to Madrid in 1622 under the patronage of Count Olivares, young King Philip IV’s First Minister. Philip and Olivares were opposites: weak, lazy and undisciplined versus strong, resourceful, energetic and dedicated. Velazquez was made official painter of the king at age 24 (no one else was allowed to paint the king). Today, ten of his Philip IV portraits survive. He also frequently painted Philip’s coterie of dwarves and fools, which unlike other artists of the day he painted with compassion, humanity and dignity.

He was recognized as an artistic genius from a young age, painting masterpieces by the age of 19. He was apprenticed to Pacheco in Seville (and married his daughter in 1618), an artist of middling ability but who taught that art was the handmaiden of the Church (“the aim of painting is the service of God,” he wrote), Valazquez was perhaps even more influenced by Caravaggio’s realism. He said he preferred to be remembered as “first in the common, rather than second in the sublime [Raphael].” In short, he was interested in the real world, even when his subjects were mythological or religious. Manet later called Velazquez “the painter’s painter.”

Pacheco recognized that his pupil’s bodegones were “the true imitation of nature.” (A bodegón is the Spanish Baroque still life genre that elevates humble food and kitchenware into subjects of intense observation and symbolic weight.) Velazquez was the only major Spanish artist of his period that focused on secular subjects and in stark contrast to El Greco, a painter from the previous generation who captured better than any painter the spiritual content of Christianity. The most deeply religious contemporary artist was Francisco de Zurbaran.

From an early age his work possessed a certain dignity and a unique spare look that, like Vermeer, captured arrested motion and silence.

Destabilized by debilitating debt, inflation, corruption, and debased currency, Velazquez would be an eye witness to Spain’s tragic collapse (the government declared bankruptcy in October 1647). His patron, Philip IV, was often morose and pessimistic. At one point Velazquez hadn’t been paid in two years. Yet his art was largely serene and rarely betrayed the strife of the period.

Velazquez’s output was relatively meager: he produced 162 known paintings (111 survive) over 43 years (one painting every 3 months, which doesn’t seem that meager to me).

Till the end of his life he remained a Hidalgo — motivated by a desire for ever higher status in Spanish society, with a dream of being named a Knight of the Order of Santiago, which requires him to show both pure noble lineage and never having worked as a common artist, neither of which were true, but nevertheless overlooked when he was knighted in 1659. He had achieved his life’s ambition, but Spain has been revealed as a hollow giant.

In 1651, he was appointed Chamberlain of the King, in charge of decorations of the palaces and the upkeep of the crown’s artistic treasures. It was a plum sinecure, but made painting difficult. Yet, at age 56, while Chamberlain, he painted his masterpiece — Las Meninas — which captured a living moment at the court of Philip IV. It was a man-made image that captured the world around them. It was like a photograph. There was no single point from which it needed to be viewed; from all angles and depths it remained true.