Diego velazquez biography paintings by picasso

Second-year History of Art and Spanish student Karolina Mickiewicz examines the artistic dialogue between 17th- and 20th-century Spain and its relations to imperialism, looking at Velazquez’s and Picasso’s ‘Las Meninas’.

Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas and the imperial past

Diego Velázquez was born in Spain in 1599 and he worked at the court of King Philip IV, becoming one of the leading painters of the Baroque period. Velázquez produced his art during the so-called Spanish Golden Age (c. 1500 – 1659), the period of time when Spain rose culturally and politically under Spanish Hapsburg family rule. He was an inspiration to his contemporaries and to the next generation of Spanish artists: for instance, Franciso Goya attempted to study and develop his technique. His reputation within Spanish culture was similar to that of Michelangelo in Italy, as set out in Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists (1550). As a court artist Velazquez praised the powerful colonial Spanish empire at the head of which were the Spanish King and Queen: the painting Las Meninas is not simply a portrait of the royal family, but it also portrayed the symbolic iconography of conquered colonial items, such as silver, cocoa, and fabrics.

Infanta Margaret Theresa

Las Meninas is a royal family portrait that represents the court artist, Velazquez, in the act of working on his painting. In the centre of Velazquez’s painting, the Infanta Margaret Theresa is standing with her maids of honour, two dwarfs with a dog, and two other royal servants in the background. In the mirror on the wall, there is a reflection of the Infanta’s parents, King Philip IV and Queen Mariana. Velazquez decided to represent the Infanta Margaret Theresa, the young royal child, in the centre of the composition to highlight her dynastic importance, as the successor of the expanding Empire. Through th

(1599-1660)

Who Was Diego Velázquez?

Spanish painter Diego Velázquez was born circa June 6, 1599, in Seville, Spain. Although his early paintings were religious-themed, he became renowned for his realistic, complex portraits as a member of King Philip IV's court. In his later years, the Spanish master produced a renowned portrait of Pope Innocent X and the famed "Las Meninas."

Early Years

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was born in Seville, Spain, circa June 6, 1599. At the age of 11, he began a six-year apprenticeship with local painter Francisco Pacheco. Velázquez's early works were of the traditional religious themes favored by his master, but he also became influenced by the naturalism of Italian painter Caravaggio.

Velázquez set up his own studio after completing his apprenticeship in 1617. A year later, he married Pacheco's daughter, Juana. By 1621, the couple had two daughters.

Royal Patronage

In 1622, Velázquez moved to Madrid, where, thanks to his father-in-law's connections, he earned the chance to paint a portrait of the powerful Count-Duke of Olivares. The count-duke then recommended Velázquez's services to King Philip IV; upon seeing a completed portrait, the young king of Spain decided that no one else would paint him and appointed Velázquez one of his court painters.

The move to the royal court gave Velázquez access to a vast collection of works and brought him into contact with important artists such as Flemish baroque master Peter Paul Reubens, who spent six months at the court in 1628. Among Velázquez's notable works from that period were "The Triumph of Bacchus," in which a group of revelers falls under the powerful spell of the Greek god of wine.

Velázquez traveled to Italy from June 1629 to January 1631, where he was influenced by the region's great artists. After returning to Madrid, he began a series of portraits that featured members of the royal family on horseback. Velázquez also de

During the summer of 1957, Picasso (who had become honorary director of the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid), turned the third floor of La Californie, his house in Cannes in the South of France, into a studio. While in this studio, from August 17 through December 30, 1957, he worked on a large series of fifty-eight canvases in near isolation, allowing few visitors to see his work. Forty-four of these canvases were directly inspired by Diego Velázquez’s masterpiece Las meninas (ca. 1656), which he had first seen as an adolescent at the Prado and used as a model for copying his jesters and dwarfs.

This horizontal painting, The Maids of Honor (Las Meninas, after Velázquez), is the first, largest, and most elaborate of the series, and is the most faithful to the vertical composition created by Velázquez. All of the figures from the old master’s canvas are present, playing the same roles and occupying similar positions. Investigating the complex spatial organization and figure grouping of Velázquez’s famous canvas, Picasso employs an effectual and fragmented black, gray, and white palette in order to provide structure to the space and its figures. Velázquez himself looms larger in Picasso’s version than in his own, an homage to the old master as creator, and holds two palettes rather than one, though neither canvas reveals what the artist is painting. While light floods into the room in Picasso’s version, the atmosphere is more muted in Velázquez’s original, and Picasso’s dog Lumb occupies the same territory as the seated Mastiff in the older Spaniard’s work. Picasso’s connection to Velázquez began as early as 1895 and recurred throughout his career in many guises, including the ballet Las Méninas. Created by Léonide Massine, with music by Gabriel Fauré and costumes by José María Sert, Las Meninas premiered at Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Rome in 1916, where Picasso would meet his future first wife, the Russian ballerina Olga Khokhl