Diego Velázquez: Why Manet Called Him the \"Painter of Painters\"
Velázquez was Philip IV's court painter and the master behind Las Meninas. His life, his key works and why later painters revered him.
Diego Velázquez is important because he was the leading painter of Spain's Golden Age, the court artist of King Philip IV, and one of the greatest painters in the history of Western art, the man behind Las Meninas (1656). He started with a precise, dark, dramatic style and moved toward loose, bold brushwork, and that freedom later made him a model for the realists and impressionists of the 19th century. Édouard Manet went as far as calling him the "painter of painters".
Seville: an apprentice who married the master's daughter
Velázquez was born in Seville and baptized there on 6 June 1599, the first child of a notary, Juan Rodríguez de Silva, and Jerónima Velázquez; his father's parents had come from Portugal. He showed a gift for art early and was apprenticed to Francisco Pacheco, a learned painter and teacher in Seville, under a six-year contract signed in 1611. In Pacheco's school he studied the classics, proportion and perspective. On 23 April 1618 he married his teacher's daughter, Juana Pacheco.
His earliest works were bodegones, kitchen scenes with prominent still lifes, and he was one of the first Spanish artists to paint them. Old Woman Frying Eggs (1618) already shows an unusual skill for realism, with dramatic lighting that may owe something to Caravaggio, whose work he could have seen in copies.
Madrid: court painter at 24
In December 1622 the king's favorite court painter died, and the powerful minister, the Count-Duke of Olivares, called the young man from Seville to Madrid. In 1623 he painted Philip IV, who liked the portrait so much that he made him his court painter; for more than thirty years Velázquez painted the king, the royal family and the court, as well as pictures to decorate the palaces. By one count he painted Philip thirty-four times.
In 1628 the great Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens came to Madrid on a diplomatic mission. He thought highly of Velázquez, and although he did not change his style much, he fired his wish to see Italy and its masters. Velázquez's first mythological painting, The Triumph of Bacchus, better known as Los Borrachos ("The Drunks"), dates from 1629.
The Surrender of Breda and the Rokeby Venus
The Surrender of Breda (1634–35) is his only surviving painting of contemporary history. Instead of showing a general on horseback looking down at a kneeling enemy, as such scenes usually did, he shows the Spanish commander standing before his Dutch counterpart as an equal. Victory, for Velázquez, did not need humiliation.
He also painted Venus at her Mirror, known as The Rokeby Venus (c. 1644–1648). It is the first known female nude by a Spanish artist and the only one by Velázquez that survives.
Rome and the portrait of Pope Innocent X
In 1649 he set out for Italy again, buying paintings by Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese for the king. He traveled with his assistant Juan de Pareja, who at that time was enslaved and whom Velázquez had trained in painting. In Rome he painted Pope Innocent X, a portrait so powerful that the English painter Joshua Reynolds thought it the finest picture in Rome; the pope rewarded him with a medal and a golden chain.
Las Meninas and Las Hilanderas
His last decade produced two masterpieces: Las Meninas, a group portrait of the royal family, and Las Hilanderas (The Spinners), a mythological scene showing the weaver Arachne punished by the goddess Minerva. In Las Meninas Velázquez painted himself into the picture, and the red cross of the Order of Santiago shines on his chest. It is said the king had it added; the knighthood itself only came three years after the painting, after an inquiry into the purity of the painter's lineage.
The Spinners, painted around 1657, is full of light, air and movement. The painter Anton Raphael Mengs said it seemed painted not by the hand but by pure will.
How did Velázquez die?
He returned to Madrid from a trip on 26 June 1660, fell ill with a fever on 31 July and died on 6 August 1660; his wife Juana was buried beside him within eight days. The church of San Juan Bautista where they lay was destroyed by the French around 1809, so his grave is now lost.
Why painters call him the painter of painters
For a long time his work stayed in the Spanish royal collection, and his fame as a universal painter came late, around 1850; it peaked between 1880 and 1920, the age of the French impressionists. Manet admired the immediacy and vivid brushwork of his pictures and described the background of his Pablo de Valladolid as possibly the most surprising fragment of painting ever made. In the 20th century Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Francis Bacon all reinterpreted his famous images.
His catalogue counts about 120 to 130 works, and most of the paintings from the royal collection are now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, the best place in the world to see him. Stand in front of Las Meninas and you understand why: he paints the air between people as carefully as the people themselves.
Learn with Velázquez: English expressions
| Expression | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| a painter's painter | an artist admired most by other artists | Velázquez is a painter's painter. |
| rise through the ranks | move up step by step | He rose through the ranks at the royal court. |
| larger than life | more impressive than ordinary | His portrait of the pope feels larger than life. |
| in the background | behind the main subject | Look at the mirror in the background. |
| ahead of the curve | earlier than others in adopting new ideas | His loose brushwork was ahead of the curve. |
Practice: Describe a painting or photo you like in three sentences, using "in the background" and "larger than life".