Velasquez

Klaus Carl

Description

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (June 1599 – August 6 1660), known as Diego Vélasquez, was a painter of the Spanish Golden Age who had considerable influence at the court of King Philip IV. Along with Francisco Goya and Le Greco, he is generally considered to be one of the greatest artists in Spanish history. His style, whilst remaining very personal, belongs firmly in the Baroque movement. Velázquez’s two visits to Italy, evidenced by documents from that time, had a strong effect on the manner in which his work evolved. Besides numerous paintings with historical and cultural value, Diego Vélasquez painted numerous portraits of the Spanish Royal Family, other major European figures, and even of commoners. His artistic talent, according to general opinion, reached its peak in 1656 with the completion of Las Meninas, his great masterpiece. In the first quarter of the 19th century, Velázquez's style was taken as a model by Realist and Impressionist painters, in particular by Édouard Manet. Since then, further contemporary artists such as Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí have paid homage to their famous compatriot by recreating several of his most famous works.

Sujets

• Spanish
• Baroque
• Las meninas
• Painter
• Velazquez
• Court painter
• Velasquez (homonymie)
• Diego Vélasquez

Informations

• Publié par: Parkstone International
• Date de parution: 04 juillet 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781781606377
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Author: Klaus Carl

Layout:
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ISBN: 978-1-78160-637-7
Klaus Carl



Diego
Velázquez
TABLE OF CONTENT


SEVlLLE. 1599-1623
Bacchus and his companions (the drinkers).
The final decade 1651-1660
BIOGRAPHY
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. Self-Portrait, ca.1640.
Oil on canvas, 45.8 x 38 cm.
Museo de Bellas Artes de San Pío V, Valencia.
SEVlLLE . 1599-1623
S panish art flourished and reached its highest peak in the seventeenth century. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, El Greco’s art shone forth brilliantly in Toledo. He was a master, uniting both the Byzantine and Italian heritage, who found a spiritual milieu for his religious, philosophical and moral convictions on the Iberian Peninsula. In Naples, Jusepe de Ribera, one of the staunchest followers of Tenebrism, was renowned. His art was filled with true Hispanic passion and religious tension. In Seville, Francisco de Zurbanin, and later, Bartolome Esteban Murillo, decorated numerous monasteries and churches with religious canvases. Velázquez holds a special place in this constellation of great masters on account of the unusual versatility of his art. This is reflected in both the content and the sty listic originality of his work.
Diego Rodríguez de Silva Velázquez, a native of Seville, the capital of Andalusia, was christened on 6 June 1599. His parents, Juan Rodríguez de Silva and Doña Geronima Velázquez, belonged to the minor nobility but were far from wealthy. According to the Andalusian custom, the son adopted his mother’s surname. At the beginning of the seventeenth century Seville was a wealthy trading port. From here, ships set out to the New World and returned with untold treasures. Seville was the leading religious centre of Andalusia with more than forty monasteries and convents, numerous churches, religious fraternities, hospitals and alms houses. But the cathedral, of course, surpassed them all, being a veritable treasure-house of art. When he was ten, Velázquez began his training with the Sevillian painter, Francisco Herrera the Elder. He was only there for a short time however, since in December 1616, his father approached Francisco Pacheco with regard to his son’s training. Pacheco was a respected artist in Seville who had obtained important commissions, although he demonstrated no particular talent. His merit in regard to Velázquez’s education lay in the fact that he, better than any other, was able to acquaint his pupil with the higher accomplishments of European culture.
From the 1560s, the city boasted an “academy” of which Pacheco’s uncle, a canon of the Seville cathedra and who also bore the name F rancisco Pacheco, was a member.
With regard to the Italian Renaissance, Francisco Pacheco was a great admirer of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian and other famous masters. Pacheco devoted many years of his life to the writing of the book Arte de la Pintura. One of Pacheco’s principal ideas — the nobility and virtue of the art of painting — played a key role in the formation of Velázquez’s profound consciousness as a painter. While eulogizing the classical art of the Renaissance, Pacheco nonetheless also paid tribute to the new realis tic trend emerging in painting.
2. The Musical Trio, ca.1617-1618.
Oil on canvas, 87 x 110 cm.
Staatliche Museum, Berlin.
3. An old woman cooking eggs, ca. 1618.
Oil on canvas, 100.5 x 119.5 cm.
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.
4 . The Investiture of St Ildefonso with the Chasuble, ca.1620.
Oil on canvas, 166 x 120 cm.
Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes, Seville.
5 . The Adoration of the Magi, 1619.
Oil on canvas, 204 x 126.5 cm.
Prado Museum, Madrid.
6 . Tavern scene with Christ at Emnaus, ca.1620.
Oil on canvas, 55 x 118 cm. National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.


In Italy, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, who rapidly gained many admirers, was the movement’s principal founder. It is not known which of Caravaggio’s or his followers’ works found their way to Seville in the 1610s, but it seems fairly certain that they did appear there. It would otherwise be difficult to account for Velázquez’s early works, which clearly betray the influence of Tenebrism, the use of striking effects of lighting, especially strong shadow, typical of Caravaggio.
We can also see the significance of the years Velázquez spent with Pacheco. Intensive studies probably began in 1612, since Pacheco himself wrote that Velázquez’s training lasted five years. On 14 March 1617, Velázquez took the examination to become a master painter and received the right to work independently. A year later, on 23 April 1618, he married Pacheco’s daughter, Juana de Miranda, who was then sixteen. The following year their daughter Francisca was born, followed in 1621 by another daughter, Ignacia.
The production of religious works of art was the principal task of Sevillian painters, and Velázquez was naturally trained in this field. Already in his apprentice years, however, he exhibited an unusual proclivity for the depiction of real life. Pacheco recounted how Velázquez specially hired a peasant boy so that, observing him crying at one moment and laughing the next, he could make sketches of him.
7. Kitchen scene with Christ in the house of Martha and Mary, 1618.
Oil on canvas, 60 x 103.5 cm.
The Trustees of the National Gallery, London.


Towards the end of the sixteenth century, paintings with subjects taken from daily existence and still lifes began to appear in Spain — at first by Dutch and Italian artists, and subsequently by Spanish painters as well. From his first years as an artist, Velázquez took a great interest in everyday scenes. The earliest of his surviving works — The Musical Trio (ca 1617; Gemäldegalerie, Berlin-Dahlem) — is a genre piece, depicting a group of people enjoying themselves at a feast.
Large figures loom in the foreground, while the action takes place in a dark room, illuminated by a narrowly directed source of light. Under such lighting, the three-dimensional forms stand out particularly sharply, creating an illusion of tangibility. The colour range is composed of hues of yellow and brown. The still life arranged on the table is accorded much attention. The smiling boy on the left is evidently the one mentioned by Pacheco. Paintings of this kind came to be known as bodeganes (from the Spanish word bodega “tavern”). Subsequently the term bodegón was extended to other depictions of a secular nature — kitchens and still lifes.
The work An Old Woman Cooking Eggs is dated to 1618. Similar depictions of kitchens occur in Italian paintings of the period, such as, for example, Interior of a Kitchen by Pensegnante de Saraceni (earlier attributed to Caravaggio) in the Galleria Corsini in Florence.
8 . The water seller of Seville, ca.1620.
Oil on canvas, 106.7 x 81 cm.
The Wellington Museum, Apsley Honse, London.
9 . St Paul, ca.1619.
Oil on canvas, 98 x 78 cm.
Museo de Arte de Cataluña, Barcelona.
The painting’s format, a still life in the foreground and a basket hanging on the wall, are parallelled in Velázquez’s work. We can state then, with certainty, that during his first years as an artist Velázquez formed part of the circle embracing the most progressive trends in the painting of his day.
In An Old Woman Cooking Eggs, one of the characters is the boy encountered in earlier works. This same boy is depicted in the most significant and mature of Velázquez’s bodegones — The Water Seller of Seville (ca 1619; The Wellington Museum, Apsley House, London). Such chatacters compel one to dwell on the sublimity and significance of the ordinary inhabitants of Seville who people the paintings. Simultaneously, Velázquez perfected his skills. In The Water Seller of Seville, the artist achieves an exceptional integrity and simplicity of compositional approach, but the texture of the objects depicted — the large earthenware jug boldly placed in the foreground, the glazed vase on the table and the glass tumbler — is conveyed with unsurpassed perfection.
Several of Velázquez’s bodegones incorporate religious subjects, such as Kitchen Scene with Christ in the House of Martha and Mary and Tavern Scene with Christ at Emmaus. They possess a vividly expressed didactic nature. On the right is a painting within a painting — the subject of the title. Similar works, comprising genre scenes with religious undertones, were produced by the Dutch painters Joachim Bueckelaer and Pieter Aertsen. It is difficult to say whether the scene with Christ in the house of Martha and Mary is a depiction of another dwelling, or whether it is indeed a painting hanging on the wall.