"Velázquez: Anticipating the Impressionists," The World & I, Sept. 1989, pp. 276-83.

Velázquez

by Jason Edward Kaufman

In 1819, Ferdinand VII of Spain established the Prado Museum, opening to the public one of the world's greatest picture collections. Not long thereafter, the name Velázquez joined Rubens, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Bernini, and Poussin in the pantheon of Baroque art. Since that time, appreciations of Diego de Velázquez (1599-1660) have centered largely on four aspects of his achievement: his realism, his innovative technique, his inventive iconography, and his unique conception of the vocation of the painter. Though it is beyond the scope of this brief study to explore these qualities in detail, an examination of a few key works may prove sufficient at least to provide an introduction to the greatest painter of seventeenth-century Spain.

His career began at the age of ten when he he commenced a six-year apprenticeship with the leading theorist and aesthetician in Seville, Francisco Pacheco. According to the early Velázquez biographer, Antonio Palomino (1724), "Pacheco's house was a gilded cage of art, the academy and school for the greatest minds in Seville." The kitchen scenes, or bodegóns, in which he specialized at this time, show a mastery of Caravaggio's "modern" style in which still life elements and figures emerge from darkness with riveting, almost photographic verism. In works such as the Old Woman Cooking Eggs (1618) and the Water Seller of Seville (1619-20), the surface textures, local colors, and modeled forms of each object have been painstakingly represented.

The Water Seller of Seville, which depicts an itinerant vendor passing a glass of water to a boy, while in the background a man drinks, is a virtual catalogue Velázquez's skill. A demonstration piece for an influential collector in Madrid, the painting makes a point of presenting an old, middle-aged, and young figure each seen from a different points of view, and an array of objects chosen to show the painter's adroitness in suggesting opacity, transparency, hardness, softness, dryness, wetness, reflectivity, and shade. The clear droplets of water clinging to the jug in the foreground, and the dimpled volume of the vessel on the plank to the left are the products of a brilliant prodigy, and Pacheco was naturally anxious for his student (and son-in-law) to rise in the world.

In 1622, Velázquez went to Madrid in order to see the pictures in El Escorial and to paint the young King, Philip IV. Pacheco had arranged that he make a portrait of the renowned poet Don Luis de Góngora, but, failed to arrange a session with the King. However, when one of the court painters passed away, Philip's chief minister, the Sevillean Count-Duke of Olivares, summoned the young painter to Madrid. In a session with the King, Velázquez made a study from life -- reportedly "in about a half hour or a little more" -- which earned him the coveted royal appointment.

Throughout his life, he made paintings numerous portraits of the king, which was his exclusive privilege, and of the royal family, many of which works are justifiably famous. Five of his royal equestrian portraits formed an ensemble in the Hall of Realms, an enormous state room in the Buen Retiro decorated during the mid 1630s. The Equestrian Portrait of Philip IV (c. 1631), reminiscent of Titian's Charles V, stands out as most glorious of the group. Viewed in profile against a landscape, Philip controls his rearing mount using only one hand, while extending the baton of command in his other. As in all his royal portraiture, the success stems from its embodiment of the gravity and understated dignity which epitomized the Hapsburg dynasty.

Also in his official capacity, Velázquez painted one of twelve battle scenes for the same room. His largest canvas, the Surrender of Breda ("Las Lanzas," 1635) commemorates the capitulation of the beseiged Dutch town of Breda in June 1625. Although the Spanish allowed lenient terms, the congenial meeting Velázquez portrays, in which the Spanish General Ambrogio Spinola accepts the keys to the fortress of Breda from Justin of Orange-Nassau, never really took place. But it did occur in a play performed at court in 1625, which may have been the inspiration for this theatrical scene. On the right, the Spanish troops are distinguished by a forest of upright lances ("lanzas"), while to the left, the Dutch stand in disarray before a ravaged landscape. The troops are individuated, not only by their portraitlike features, but by their various reactions to the event. Unconventionally, Velázquez depicts Spinola with his hand mercifully on Nassau's shoulder, emphasizing not only the military victory, but a moral one as well for the defenders of Catholicism.

Of the dignitaries who visited the Spanish court, it was Peter Paul Rubens, the Flemish artist-diplomat, who seems to have had the greatest influence on Velázquez. During a seven-month stay in 1628, the Ambassador from the Netherlands negotiated with Philip's ministers, toured the royal collections with Velázquez, and executed royal portraits, among which was an equestrian of Philip IV (1628) which promptly replaced the version painted by Velázquez (1626). Within two months of Rubens' departure, Velázquez left for Italy "to perfect his art." He landed in Genoa in 1629, and proceeded to Venice, then south to Rome where the Spanish ambassador saw to his accomodations first in the Vatican, allowing him to make copies after the fescoes by Michelangelo and Raphael, and later in the Villa Medici where he sketched the numerous antique statues in that collection. The impact of this Italian sojourn transformed the young master's art.

Whether painted in Rome or following his return to Madrid in early 1631, several canvasses illustrate the transformation that occurred. If the early bodegóns had been extraordinary in their naturalism, they were by no means perfect: the static and emotionless sitters appear to have been scrutinized in the same manner as inanimate objects; the individually scanned items are disparate elements rather than parts of a unified whole; furthermore, Velázquez had yet to master linear perspective, as evident, for example, from the array of articles on an impossibly tilted board behind the woman cooking eggs. All this was to change after Italy.

In the Forge of Vulcan (c. 1631), for example, Velázquez depicts the moment from Ovid's Metamorphoses when Apollo tells Vulcan he is cuckolded by Mars. The narrative unfolds by means of gesture and staging as the workers, interrupted in their actions, respond to the shocking news. The figures are no longer mere hollow shells, as Velázquez evinces a newly acquired understanding of human anatomy. The composition is vastly improved from the earlier scenes, not merely in the convincing depth of space, but in the distance separating the figures. And unlike the sombre, earthy, chiaroscuresque palette of the Seville pictures, glowing metal is captured with brilliant impastoed orange paint, drawing attention to the pivotal confrontation between Apollo and Vulcan. Velázquez has learned to engage the mind, as well as the eye.

In Venus and Cupid (c. 1648), his only mythology of the 1640s, Velázquez seems to have worked with Venetian prototypes in mind. While it was not unusual for naked women to appear in paintings in Spanish collections, it was unheard of for a Spanish artist to paint one. In fact, after Velázquez it would not happen again until Goya's Maja desnuda. Perhaps for this reason, Velázquez shows the sensuously supine goddess from behind, admiring herself in a mirror held by her son. He has tastefully replaced what would be a highly provocative reflection with a blurred image of the sitter's face.

In his attention to optical effect rather than physical description, Velázquez anticipated the Impressionists by two centuries. His keen understanding of the way light suggests form enabled him to abbreviate his brushwork with no loss of visual descriptiveness. In his excellent monograph (published by Yale University Press), Jonathan Brown describes the painter's technique as being "based on the implication rather than the elaboration of detail." In the portrait of Philip IV in Brown and Silver (c. 1635), for example, rather than duplicate the complex pattern of the rich, silver-brocaded fabric of the King's coat, Velázquez dabs on impasted pigments in an apparently unplanned scheme which, viewed from a distance, captures the glimmering light that scintillates around the luxurious textile. According to José Ortega y Gasset, "The painter has thrown his head back, half-closed his eyelids, and between them has pulverized the proper form of each object, reducing it to molecules of light, to pure sparks of color. On the other hand, his pictures may be viewed from a single point of view, as a whole at a glance."

When working in the loose, Impressionistic manner, as in the portraits of court dwarves, jesters, and buffoons, Velázquez summarized forms, but sacrificed nothing in terms of psychological detail. "Francisco Lezcano" (c. 1638) tilts his head dizzily as he fingers a deck of cards. In his vacant, open-mouthed expression, Velázquez discloses signs of mental retardation. The dwarf Calabazas (c. 1638) is seen from above, seated on a low stool with his legs folded under, nervously grinding his hands together and peering up with an uneasy and unwholesome grin. These informal studies exhibit a greater balance between external appearance and inner character than the affected, courtly likenesses of the royal family.

In the 1640s, Philip sought to glorify the struggling monarchy by remodeling the Alcázar, the Buen Retiro, and El Escorial. To that end, in 1648, Velázquez went to Italy to purchase artworks. The Vatican took the opportunity to enlist the painter in executing a portrait of the Pope. Prior to performing this important commission, Velázquez made a study of his Moorish slave, Juan de Pareja (1649). This picture was displayed in an annual exhibition in the portico of the Pantheon, where Palomino reports that it "gained such universal applause that in the opinion of all the painters of the different nations everything else seemed like painting but this alone like truth." His portrait of Pope Innocent X (1649) continues the tradition established by Raphael's Pope Leo X with Two Cardinals (1518) and Titian's Pope Paul III with Alessandro and Ottavio Farnese (1546). However, while conforming to the accepted formula, Velázquez penetrates quickly into the personality of the seventy-six-year old Pope, capturing an austere, almost wrathful expression that verges on a sneer.

Throughout his career, especially after his meeting with Rubens, Velázquez entertained the notion of the artist-courtier. Thus, in his Portrait of Martínez Montañes (1634-35), the famed Sevillean sculptor, Velázquez shows him as a well-appointed gentleman sculpting a bust of the King. Rather than a lowly, manual laborer, he appears contemplative, as if perusing his subject and about to return to his art. In other instances, Velázquez evolved more elaborate schemes for making this point. The Fable of Arachne and Minerva ("The Spinners," c. 1645), for example, illustrates the story in which Arachne, a mortal, challenged the goddess Minerva to a weaving contest. For her theme Minerva ominously depicted various instances in which the gods had punished mortals for their excessive pride; Arachne baitingly wove scenes of the gods seduced by mortals. Their efforts were judged a draw, but Minerva, enraged, turned Arachne into a spider to weave eternally.

In Velázquez's interpretation, the episode becomes a modern day parable of the aspiring artist. In the dimly-lit foreground, workers spin and card thread while, in the background, the contestants and some courtly ladies are entertained by a musician in Arachne's brightly-lit studio. They admire a tapestry based on Titian's famous Rape of Europa (which Rubens had copied during his 1628 visit). Thus, it is Titian's design that rivals the gods': the artist rises above manual labor to join his cultivated peers.

Las Meninas ("The Ladies in Waiting," 1656) can be understood as Velázquez's final statement on the artist's social standing. The scene takes place in the late prince's quarters in the Alcázar. All the furnishings and persons have been identified. Below the paintings on the far wall is a mirror in which can be seen the reflection of the King and Queen, who appear to have just entered the room. In the center is the Infanta Maria-Teresa being offered a little pitcher of water by a menina. To the right, another lady in waiting has noticed the royal couple and begins to curtsy. In the right corner are two dwarves, one of whom kicks a resting dog. Beyond them stand a pair of chaperones, and in the rear of the room, an attendant has opened the door, apparently that the King and Queen may continue on their walk. To the left, Velázquez stands, long-handled brush and palette in hand, before a towering canvas that is visible from the back. He seems to regard the position in front of the painting that would be occupied by the reflected royal couple, as if he is painting them.

Since the picture was placed in Philip IV's private office in the summer quarters in the Alcázar, it is the King himself who would most often have occupied that position in real life, thus enacting the painter's fiction. Many have remarked on the mastery with which the naturalistic space yields a sense of spatial continuity with the spectator's -- a characteristic Baroque illusion in which the viewer is made to feel as though he participates in the depicted scene. "It is not painting but truth," wrote Palomino. Thus, notwithstanding the ambiguity of the scenario, and the uncertainty as to what Velázquez is painting, the canvas documents the status of the artist in the orbit of the royal family. Not only is his studio the playground of the princess, it is also an informal stop on the rounds of the King and Queen. The painter's self-portrait in Las Meninas is juxtapoed not only with the Infanta's image, but with the reflected portraits of the royal couple as well, an unimaginably lofty situation for a supposedly menial worker such as a painter. Like Apelles, Titian, and Rubens, Velázquez enjoys a familial relationship with his monarch.

The red cross on the painter's chest signifies his membership in the military Order of Santiago, admission to which marked the fulfillment of his ambitions. Though painters were automatically disqualified from membership, during his second stay in Italy, Velázquez had obtained a written petition from the papal secretary recommending that he be admitted to the Order. Philip seconded the nomination eight years later, but Velázquez was quickly rejected owing to the committee's failure to confirm the artist's noble heritage. (Ironically, they had no trouble determining that Velázquez had never taken money for a painting!) After two papal dispensations were granted at the King's behest, Velázquez was finally admitted to the noble Order in November 1659. The red cross he displays in Las Meninas was added afterwards.

When the armistice was signed between Spain and the allied forces of France and England, a marriage was arranged betwen the Infanta Maria-Teresa and Louis XIV. In June 1660, Velázquez accompanied Philip to the Isle of Pheasants, a traditional diplomatic site on the border between France and Spain, where Philip gave his daughter to Louis XIV, and with her the succession to the Spanish crown. Within six weeks of his return to Madrid, Velázquez fell ill and died. His oeuvre was limited to several hundred autograph works of which fewer than a hundred survive. A number of these will be assembled in a Velázquez exhibition organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (October 3-January 7, 1990), to which, for the first time in its history, the Prado Museum will be lending major paintings by the master.

Jason Edward Kaufman ©