Diego Velázquez
Diego Velázquez was a Spanish Baroque painter who lived from 1599 to 1660 during the “Spanish Golden Age”. Velázquez served as the main court painter for King Philip IV and is most remembered for the exquisite portraits he painted during this time. However, Velázquez also painted important historical and cultural scenes.
Velázquez was born in Seville to a middle-class working family. His early artistic abilities led his family to apprentice him to the Mannerism artist, Francisco Pacheco, who encouraged Velázquez to study the classical masters and their techniques as well as the current art trends of their time. Their union was favorable, and Velázquez married Pacheco’s daughter. Velázquez became relatively successful in his hometown of Seville, and in 1622, he moved to the capital of Madrid to continue his work there. After a few months, he moved back to Seville.
After the death of the court painter, Rodrigo de Villandrando, Velázquez was asked to return to Madrid to paint a test portrait essentially of the Count-Duke and Prime Minister, Gaspar de Guzmán, to paint his portrait. The finished portrait was presented to King Philip IV, who admired it, and requested that Velázquez paint a portrait of the king himself in 1623. The king looked upon the finished portrait favorably, and asked Velázquez to move to Madrid to reside there as the official court painter. From then on, all portraits of the king were to be painted by Diego Velázquez.
In 1627, Philip IV organized a competition among the Spanish artists, to paint a scene of the Moors leaving Spain. Velázquez won that competition and advanced the scope of his subject in his paintings beyond portraits, into the world of history paintings. This expansion of his repertoire was further fueled in 1629 to 1630 when Velázquez left Spain to study the art in Italy. During this trip, with obvious Italian art influence, he made several large-scale history paintings that received high accolades.
Velázquez used the technique of chiaroscuro in which he would paint with light and dark colors with start contrasts between them. In his work, however, the dark colors were often the dominant colors on the canvas; a technique known as tenebrism. And interestingly, Velázquez preferred to paint from life so he made few preparatory sketches. The work of Velázquez enjoyed a revival from the early nineteenth-century on with renewed interest from many prominent artists such as Édouard Manet, James Whistler, John Singer Sargent, Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dalí.
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