Fernando Sánchez Castillo
On Christmas Eve of 1734, a fire broke out at the Royal Alcázar of Madrid, a Spanish palace known for its extravagant architecture and bountiful art collection. Spreading quickly and uncontrollably, the catastrophic blaze raged for four days. Over 1,000 paintings were salvaged from the fire, according to El País’ Miguel Ángel García Vega……Story continues…
By: Ella Feldman
Source: Smithsonian
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Critics:
Besides the many portraits of Philip by Velázquez—thirty-four by one count—he painted portraits of other members of the royal family: Philip’s first wife, Elisabeth of Bourbon, and her children, especially her eldest son, Don Baltasar Carlos, whom Velázquez first depicted at about two years of age. Cavaliers, soldiers, churchmen, and the poet Francisco de Quevedo (now at Apsley House), sat for Velázquez.
Velázquez also painted several buffoons and dwarfs in Philip’s court, whom he depicted sympathetically and with respect for their individuality, as in The Jester Don Diego de Acedo (1644), whose intelligent face and huge folio with ink-bottle and pen by his side show him to be a wise and well-educated man.[47] Pablo de Valladolid (1635), a buffoon evidently acting a part, and The Buffoon of Coria (1639) belong to this middle period.
As court painter, Velázquez had fewer commissions for religious works than any of his contemporaries. Christ Crucified (1632), painted for the Convent of San Plácido in Madrid, depicts Christ immediately after death. The Savior’s head hangs on his breast and a mass of dark tangled hair conceals part of the face, visually reinforcing the idea of death.[48] The figure is presented alone before a dark background.
Velázquez’s son-in-law Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo had succeeded him as usher in 1634, and Mazo himself had received a steady promotion in the royal household. Mazo received a pension of 500 ducats in 1640, increased to 700 in 1648, for portraits painted and to be painted, and was appointed inspector of works in the palace in 1647. Philip now entrusted Velázquez with the mission of procuring paintings and sculpture for the royal collection.
Rich in pictures, Spain was weak in statuary, and Velázquez was commissioned once again to proceed to Italy to make purchases. When he set out in 1649, he was accompanied by his assistant Juan de Pareja who at this point in time was a slave and who had been trained in painting by Velázquez. Velázquez sailed from Málaga, landed at Genoa, and proceeded from Milan to Venice, buying paintings of Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese as he went.
At Modena he was received with much favor by the duke, and here he painted the portrait of the duke at the Modena gallery and two portraits that now adorn the Dresden gallery, for these paintings came from the Modena sale of 1746. Those works presage the advent of the painter’s third and latest manner, a noble example of which is the great portrait of Pope Innocent X in the Doria Pamphilj Gallery in Rome, where Velázquez now proceeded.
There he was received with marked favor by the Pope, who presented him with a medal and golden chain. Velázquez took a copy of the portrait—which Sir Joshua Reynolds thought was the finest picture in Rome—with him to Spain. Several copies of it exist in different galleries, some of them possibly studies for the original or replicas painted for Philip. Velázquez, in this work, had now reached the manera abreviada, a term coined by contemporary Spaniards for this bolder, sharper style.
The portrait shows such ruthlessness in Innocent’s expression that some in the Vatican feared that it would be seen unfavorably by the Pope; in fact Innocent was pleased with the work, and hung it in his official visitor’s waiting room. In 1650 in Rome Velázquez also painted a portrait of Juan de Pareja, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, US. This portrait procured his election into the Accademia di San Luca. Purportedly Velázquez created this portrait as a warm-up of his skills before his portrait of the Pope.
It captures in great detail Pareja’s countenance and his somewhat worn and patched clothing with an economic use of brushwork. In November 1650, Juan de Pareja was freed from slavery by Velázquez. To this period also belong two small landscape paintings both titled View of the Garden of the Villa Medici. As landscapes apparently painted directly from nature, they were exceptional for their time, and reveal Velázquez’s close study of light at different times of day.
As part of his mission to procure decorations for the Room of Mirrors at the Royal Alcazar of Madrid, Velázquez commissioned Matteo Bonuccelli to cast twelve bronze copies of the Medici lions. The copies are now in the Royal Palace of Madrid and the Museo del Prado. During his time in Rome, Velázquez fathered a natural son, Antonio, whom he is not known ever to have seen.
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