Spanish Baroque Painting: Velázquez and Murillo
Other issues that were explored: Zurbarán’s The Holy Face and The Baby Jesus in the Carpentry, carving a cross or concocting in Nazareth a crown of spines. Its true everyday world transcriptions are synthesized in his still lifes.
Baroque Realism: Velázquez and Murillo
Diego Rodríguez de Silva Velázquez (Madrid, 1599 – Seville, 1660) is the greatest genius of Spanish art. He was a supreme portraitist who covered all genres of painting: religious painting, mythological fable, still life and landscape. In his works, he captures nature, light, and movement.
His apprenticeship was done in the studio of Francisco Pacheco in Seville. He moved to Madrid in 1623 to fill the position of chamber painter. He made two trips to Italy: on the first, he studied, copying Raphael and Michelangelo, whose experiences are reflected in The Forge of Vulcan. Twenty years later, he went with the embassy to buy modern classical statues and paintings for the royal collection. He portrayed his Moorish servant Juan de Pareja and Pope Innocent X. In Italy, he was delayed three years by the birth of a son he had with a Roman lady, whom he portrayed in the Rokeby Venus. On his return, he was appointed chamberlain of the palace, and just before dying, he received the habit of the Order of Santiago.
His style evolved, having two periods: his time in Seville, of youth and training, and his subsequent maturity in Madrid. The Seville period is steeped in the Caravaggesque style. The gloomy color is earthy, and very precise figures show contours, whose plasticity recalls the sculptural images carved by Martínez Montañés.
He majored in interiors of kitchens, excelling in Old Woman Cooking Eggs and The Water Seller of Seville. Some of these works have religious connotations, such as Christ in the House of Martha and Mary and La Mulata. Sacred themes he painted can be summarized as: The Immaculate and St. John on Patmos, which has been interpreted as a wedding gift made to his wife, with the young couple appearing portrayed under the guise of the Virgin and the Evangelist.
By 1630, after returning from Italy, his style changed, which had already been timidly suggested in The Drunkards. Velázquez discovered light that illuminates, allowing him to also capture the air interposed between the figures and objects. The forms thus lose accuracy, but gain in ultra-bright colors. The brushwork gradually becomes more fluid, so it becomes an advancement of the Impressionist technique. These experiences are realized in the stupendous gallery of portraits. He portrayed the King, Queen, and Prince Baltasar Carlos, the first minister, Count-Duke of Olivares, court jesters and poets, artists, politicians, and military men, such as General Spinola in The Surrender of Breda or The Lances. Around 1632, he painted religious compositions such as The Crucified Christ.
The final stretch of his life is settled with two masterpieces:
- The Family of Philip IV, known as Las Meninas, is a multiple portrait. All the characters are arranged frontally. On the first level, Velázquez, followed by the meninas Isabel de Velasco and Agustina Sarmiento flanking the Infanta Margarita, the dwarf Maribárbola (which highlights the beauty of its owner by contrast with its ugliness), and Nicholas Pertusato, a jester dwarf, who steps on the mastiff; behind, Doña Marcela Ulloa and a butler of Diego de Azcoitia; at the bottom, up the stairs, the room of Don José Nieto, and reflected in the mirror, Kings Philip IV and Doña Mariana of Austria, who occupy the place of the spectator, posing as models for the canvas that the artist is painting with a brush and palette in hand.
- In The Spinners, he develops the fable of Arachne, as told in Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”. Velázquez, as he had done in The Drunkards and The Forge of Vulcan, re-treats a mythological subject as a vulgar scene, lacking heroic and rhetorical references.