Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was born in Seville in 1599 and rose to become the court painter of King Philip IV of Spain, a position he held for nearly four decades. Trained by Francisco Pacheco (whose daughter he married), Velázquez absorbed the naturalist revolution of Caravaggio and transformed it into something more subtle, atmospheric, and psychologically penetrating. His brushwork — seemingly effortless, built from loose, broken strokes that coalesce into form only at the proper viewing distance — was centuries ahead of its time.
Las Meninas (1656) is widely considered the most complex and intellectually challenging painting in Western art. It depicts Velázquez himself painting a large canvas, attended by the young Infanta Margarita and her maids of honour, while the king and queen appear reflected in a mirror on the far wall. The painting is simultaneously a group portrait, a meditation on the act of painting, and a puzzle about perception and reality that has generated more scholarly commentary than almost any other work. His portrait of Pope Innocent X was so devastatingly truthful that the Pope reportedly exclaimed, “Too real!”
Velázquez influenced Manet, who called him “the painter of painters,” and through Manet virtually the entire tradition of modern painting. His ability to capture the atmosphere of a room — the play of light and air around his figures — anticipated Impressionism by two centuries. Francis Bacon’s screaming popes, based on the Innocent X portrait, testify to the continuing power of his vision.