Baroque and Rococo

 

Diego Velazquez



 

The Face of Spain


 

Enigmas and Reflections

- Riddles in Paint

 

The second picture connected with Arachne, painted by Velazquez in 1644-1648, presents something of a problem: what is the dark-haired young woman pointing to on the empty panel in front of her? She may be either Arachne seen as the personification of painting, or a Sibyl or prophetess pointing to the future.
 

Velazquez
Arachne (Sibyl?)
1644-48
Oil on canvas, 64 x 58 cm
Meadows Museum, Dallas
 

Velazquez
Sibyl
c. 1632
Oil on canvas, 62 x 50 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid
 

Velazquez himself becomes almost another Arachne in his ability to interweave light and shade, form and colour in rivalry with the gods of art themselves, while concealing mysterious signs and meanings in the texture of his work - although to say so contradicts the idea of him that was later criticized by Classicists but praised by the Impressionists when they claimed that he was not concerned with artistic ideologies, but owed allegiance only to what he actually saw in nature.
That concept of an uneducated painter following only the dictates of his eyesight seemed to be supported by the fact that Velazquez hardly figures at all in seventeenth-century European art theory, and he clearly obeyed no academic rules of the kind most notably formulated in the Italian Renaissance. On the other hand, since publication in 1925 of the contents of Velazquez' private library, which contained 156 learned works, it has been obvious that he did have an extensive fund of knowledge. His references to classical mythology, for instance in the painting Mercury and Argus of around 1659, should be viewed in this light.
 

Velazquez
Mercury and Argus
c. 1659
Oil on canvas, 127 x 248 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid
 

Philip IV's court painter obviously had an educated mind that was reflected in many of his works in the coded form of complex riddling structures, even in a picture on such a simple subject as Venus at her Mirror. This gracefully erotic depiction of a feminine nude appears to be one of the most perfect such pictures in European art purely because of the flowing form of the goddess's body lying at ease on the grey fabric, the virtuoso painting and the magnificent colour. Yet art historians today agree that the comparison between the real back view of the goddess of love and the reflection of her face, blurred as if in a dream (it was in fact painted over at a later date), in a mirror held up by Cupid, intends to explore the relationship between reality, reflection and image. Velazquez reflects on the possibilities of painting by using the methods of painting itself, situating it somewhere between reality and brilliant appearance: in short, his thinking on the medium of the image and the process of creating it is both intellectual and sensual.
In January 1649 a small flotilla put out to sea from Malaga. One of those on board was Diego Velazquez, on his way to Italy for the second time. He wished to pay another visit to a country that was so rich in art, and he had also been commissioned to buy pictures and casts of classical statues in Rome for Philip IV's collections. He met the most famous Italian artists of the time in the capital, and tried unsuccessfully to entice some of them to Madrid. He also showed his own skill in many portraits painted while he was in Rome.
 

Velazquez
Venus at her Mirror (The Rokeby Venus)
1649-51
Oil on canvas, 122,5 x 177 cm
National Gallery, London

The painting shows traces of damage from old tears and worn paint,
and it was slashed by a campaigning suffragette in 1914.
 

It was at this time that he painted his fine portrait of the half-caste Juan de Pareja. The sitter was an assistant in Velazquez' workshop, where he was employed on minor tasks. The flesh tints of the face looking challengingly out of the frame are heightened with bold brushstrokes.
 

Velazquez
Juan de Pareja
c. 1650
Oil on canvas, 81,3 x 69,9 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
 

A wide white collar with a jagged border contrasts effectively with the black of the model's hair and beard and his copper-coloured complexion. The dark eyes glow with great expressive force. If we compare this portrait with some of Velazquez' more routine work of a later date, its outstanding quality is particularly striking.
 

Velazquez
Infanta Maria Teresa
1651-52
Oil on canvas, 34,3 x 40 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
 

According to an eye-witness, this half-length portrait of Pareja was displayed in the Pantheon in Rome during the celebrations of the Feast of St. Joseph on 19 March 1650, and met with unreserved admiration from artists of many different nationalities. It won admission to the Roman Academy for the Spanish court painter, serving Velazquez as a kind of entree, and he could expect its success to bring him commissions to paint some very distinguished people. Sure enough, the Pope himself was soon sitting for him, and so were members of the papal household down to the So-Called Barber to the Pope, whose rather smug expression has sometimes been taken to show that the portrait is actually of a buffoon. Under a thick layer of dust and dirt, the portrait of Camillo Massimi also shows the fine qualities indicating that it was executed by Velazquez himself.
 

However, the picture that attracted most attention of all was the portrait of the artistically minded Pope Innocent X, completed by Velazquez in the spring of 1650. This work is one of his absolute masterpieces. Pope Innocent wears the white liturgical under-vestment known as an alb, a biretta, and a red cape to which subdued highlights lend a sheen suggesting the texture of fabric. The Pope is seated in a red armchair, which is picked out from the opulent red of the curtain behind it by its gilded ornamentation. In the strong, almost rustic features of the Pope's reddened face with its fleshy cheeks, the critically keen suspicious eyes strike a note of lively intelligence. The fascinating nature of a man aware of his own power is wonderfully expressed in the contrast between the face and the fine nervous hands, which convey the sensitivity of this powerful figure.

This painting by Velazquez is primarily a symphony in red, a harmonious mingling of all kinds of red shades flowing into each other, while the alb provides a contrast in its creamy white cascades of pleats. In general the pigments are very fluid, applied as impasto only in a few places. It is as if the colouring represents not only magnificence and dignity but also the latent and sometimes violent passions so often connected with the office of the Holy See, and exemplified in the person of Pope Innocent. It is almost impossible to understand how Velazquez created so life-like an image of a man, and indeed of an entire age, while still preserving a discreet distance.
Apparently the Pope was not at first very enthusiastic about his portrait, describing it as troppo vero, "too real". However, we are told that it eventually won his approval, and he presented the Spanish painter with a very valuable gold chain. Velazquez himself must presumably have been very pleased with the portrait, or he would not have taken a replica back to Spain with him. His art colleagues certainly praised it, and many copies of the work were made. Pietro Martire Neri (1591-1661) was particularly active here; he was one of the circle around Velazquez in Rome and also painted the portrait of Cristoforo Segni, the Pope's major-domo, which is obviously based on a lost sketch by the master.
 

Velazquez
Portrait of Innocent X
c. 1650
Oil on canvas, 141 x 119 cm
Galleria Doria-Pamphilj, Rome


With this portrait Velazquez joins the ranks of those painters who,
from the Renaissance onwards, produced magnificent papal likenesses. Outstanding examples,
which he must have known, were Raphael's portraits of Pope Julius II (c. 1511/12; London, National Gallery),
and Pope Leo X with two cardinals (1518/19; Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi),
and several pictures by Titian of Pope Paul III, still extant in Naples.
 

Velazquez
Pope Innocent X
c. 1650
Oil on canvas, 49,2 x 41,3 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington
 

Velazquez
Cardenal Camillo Astalli Pamphli
1651
 

Philip IV wanted his favourite court painter, now enjoying such a triumph in Rome - although he did not found a stylistic school there - to paint his second wife, Queen Mariana, and to give his advice on the renovation of the old royal palace in Madrid, the Alcazar. Consequently, he wished Velazquez to come back to court as soon as possible, but none the less the artist delayed his return for another whole year.
The portrait of Queen Mariana required by the king was not completed until 1653. The queen was the daughter of Emperor Ferdinand III and Philip's sister the Infanta Maria, and had married her widowed uncle in 1649. She was nineteen at the time of this portrait, which shows her full length, wearing a black dress with silver braid, and of course adorned with much valuable jewellery: gold necklaces and bracelets, and a large gold brooch on her close-fitting bodice. Her right hand rests on the back of a chair, and she holds a delicate lace scarf in her left hand. The picture is bathed in harmonious shades of black and red, although the dramatically drawn curtain has been painted over by another hand.
The composition turns on the focal point of the queen's alabaster skin and rouged face, small and almost doll-like under her hair, which is dressed very wide. Her bust, tightly encased in the bodice, her stiff farthingale and all her fashionable magnificence are rendered true to life by Velazquez, and at the same time he reveals them as a theatrical show concealing the girl's natural physical nature beneath the armour of courtly constraint. The court that Velazquez had now served for many years was the only sphere in which he had lived and worked since his youth in Seville. Art historians have engaged in much controversy over the artist's social ambitions.
 

Velazquez
Queen Dona Mariana of Austria
1652-53
Oil on canvas, 231 x 131 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid
 

Velazquez
Queen Dona Mariana of Austria (detail)
1652-53
Oil on canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid
 

The Spanish cultural philosopher Ortega y Gasset, for instance, suggested in 1955 that there was only one factor of any real significance in the life of Velazquez: his appointment as court painter. In an outwardly uneventful existence he had only one wife, only one friend (the king), and only one studio (the palace). Self-confident and self-sufficient, he neither joined the games of precedence played at court nor pursued his own fame. The nobility in his painting has also been seen by many writers as resulting from his own social position as a member of the Spanish aristocracy. However, a whole series of documents provides evidence that Velazquez was by no means just a generally admired artistic genius and a morally superior aristocrat. For instance, a royal decree of the year 1628 allots the court painter the same daily ration of food as the barbers received, and he was always having to do battle to get money that was owed to him -although it must be admitted that the Count-Duke of Olivares too was in the same position.

Velazquez probably owed his undeniably high regard at the court of Philip IV more to the official positions he gradually accumulated than to his artistic importance. His appointment by the king to the post of Chamberlain in 1652, despite the veto of the palace administration, was probably less in recognition of his professional achievements as a painter than for the architectural advice he had also given since the mid-1640s. His biographer Antonio Palomino deplored these official pursuits on the grounds that they left the court painter hardly any time for his real artistic work.
Even when he had attained the highest offices, Velazquez was not entirely the enlightened, magnanimous courtier impervious to flattery that later claims would have it. On the contrary: he would tolerate no other painters around him except his son-in-law, and he did not allow his gifted Moorish slave Pareja to exercise his own creative skills. As compensation for the irregular payment of his salary, Velazquez took his chance to divert to himself part of the money due to subordinate employees, who went on strike over the matter in 1659. By the time of his death, the court painter had accumulated 3,200 ducats in this way, although the palace owed him only 1,600 ducats.
In 1658 the king, according to Palomino, decided to invest Velazquez with a knightly order. There were three military orders available to choose from, and Diego, so his biographer, decided on the Orden militar de la Caballeria de Santiago. Since no one could enter a military order unless his family sprang from "old Christian" roots, without any Moorish or Jewish blood in the family tree, there had to be complicated investigations into the artist's ancestry. Furthermore, all members of the family must be hidalgos: that is to say, they must not work for money, so that anyone who engaged in commerce or trade - including the trade of painting - did not qualify. Velazquez' struggle for admittance to these socially exclusive ranks was thus a difficult one. A hundred and forty-eight witnesses were questioned, including many who were well disposed to him, but without the whole-hearted support of the king and the consent of the Pope it is likely that Velazquez would never have become a knight of the Order of Santiago.