Diego Velázquez was more than just about ‘Las Meninas’
Why we should look beyond the great Spanish painter’s most famous work to fully appreciate his artistic creativity
Each time I visit the Prado Museum in Madrid, I come across a familiar scene. Throngs of people gather in front of the Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (1599–1660) masterpiece Las Meninas, attentively listen to the words of a tour guide, and then disperse. A whole slew of Velázquez paintings which surround Las Meninas or are on display in adjoining rooms receive scant attention.
I want to make it clear that Las Meninas fully deserves all the attention it receives. It belongs to the pantheon of the greatest works of Western art. It has been eulogized as representing “theology of painting,” “true philosophy of art,” and countless other accolades. Pablo Picasso was so enamored with Las Meninas that he went on to create 58 paintings based on his interpretation of the work over a four-month span in 1957.
I must confess that Las Meninas has a captivating influence on me as well. Whenever I am in Madrid, I yearn to see it again. It depicts a moment in the daily life of the Spanish royal court around Infanta Princess Margarita (1651–73) in which Velázquez and the maids-of-honor appear as both observers and actors. The work is as much about the maids as it is about the princess. Velázquez’s profile of the physically challenged Mari Bárbola on the right is telling in the sense that she seems to be keenly observant of the moment as Velázquez himself is. As one critic has put it, “unlike the faces of most of the other characters in the painting, hers and Velázquez’s are shown both clearly defined and directed fully forward; their glances meet ours: artist and dwarf are alert outsiders — observers and witnesses.”
Las Meninas must be one of the most intriguing and complex paintings in art blurring the distinction between viewers and the characters in the painting. It is the painting’s projection of immediacy and anticipation of a dialog with the viewer(s) that’s most likely what the French poet Theophile Gautier had in mind when he reportedly remarked after seeing Las Meninas: “Où est don le tableau?” (“Where is the painting?”).
Velázquez created Las Meninas just four years before he passed away. It therefore is very representative of the summit of his artistic genius. The question invariably comes to mind: But how did he get there? To answer this, we need to look at his corpus of works, not just one painting. Equally important, his works in their totality help us in getting a perspective into the mind and sensibility of the artist that ultimately led to the creation of Les Meninas. To miss out on his other works is like remaining in the dark about the full extent of Velázquez’s artistic genius and versatility.
Early life and works: Bodegon Paintings
Velázquez was born in 1599 in Seville which was then Spain’s largest and most cosmopolitan city. Early in his life Velázquez showed prodigious artistic talent, and at the age of only twelve was apprenticed to Francisco Pacheco (1564–1644), the head of the painters’ guild of Seville. Pacheo’s house-cum-studio was the focus of artistic life in the city serving as a magnet for its most creative minds. In 1617, Velázquez finished his apprenticeship and was granted the right to set up his own studio. A year later, he married Pacheco’s daughter Juana and by 1621, the couple had two daughters.
Velázquez learned from Pacheo the basics of art and painting, and initially seemed to follow the footsteps of his mentor who believed that the purpose of art was to inspire people “to adore and love God and to cultivate piety.” During his early career he produced traditional religious works such as the Immaculate Conception and Saint John the Evangelist on Patmos.
In Seville, Velázquez had also been exposed to copies of the works of art innovators such as Caravaggio whose works were well known for their intense realism, strong contrasts of light and dark and use of ordinary people in the role of famous religious figures.
Soon Velázquez’s brush deviated from the artistic conventionalism of his times and turned to providing primacy to human beings instead of divine figures. It is also the ordinary people in all walks of life that became his primary focus. “I should prefer to be the leading painter of what are considered common subjects than the second-best of the refined,” Velázquez is said to have declared. He lived up to these ideals throughout his artistic life. It is the individuality of human beings in all its forms that Velázquez made the front and center of his works, and it would permeate his entire body of work going forward.
Growing up in Seville, Velázquez had witnessed the growing chasm of the rich and the poor and his bodegón paintings expose us to the reality of the daily struggles of ordinary people. Derived from the Spanish word bodega for tavern, bodegón stood for artistic representations of daily scenes from taverns, kitchens, and street corners. Velázquez was only about nineteen when he composed An Old Woman Cooking Eggs (1618). The work is a powerful and authentic depiction of a scene in a street kitchen. In particular, the old lady’s worn-out face magnifies the daily grind of her job. Yet the side view of her face also conjures a picture of caring despite her daily struggles. The image of the eggs being cooked in hot oil and those of varied domestic utensils is striking and seems to heighten the realism of the scene.
‘I should prefer to be the leading painter of what are considered common subjects than the second-best of the refined.’
The realism portrayed in An Old Woman Frying Eggs is also echoed in The Waterseller of Seville that Velázquez composed in a three-part series of the same painting between the years 1618–1622. A majestic profile of the contemplative Waterseller serves as the centerpiece of the work. Velázquez imparts a transcending and noble quality to the water seller who seems to have resigned to his fate as one of daily struggle. He has just poured a glass of water for the boy from the large clay vessel. While both the boy and the waterseller hold the glass at the same time, they stare past each other. In between the young boy and the aged water seller, the shadowy figure of a young man directly stares at us while drinking from a mug. He most likely represents the grown-up version of the alter ego of the young boy or the waterseller’s youth long gone by. The naturalism of the painting is striking. The lines on the water vessel and the smudgy water marks on it seem to harmonize with lines on the waterseller’s face and his raggedy outfit. It is Velázquez’s careful use of light that magnifies not only the Waterseller’s facial expressions but also the look and feel of the mundane objects such as water vessel and the shining glass. The contrasting use of shadows heightens the imaginary presence of the blurry and partially hidden figure in the back.
In another of Velázquez’s Seville bodegons, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, a maid with an unhappy face is busy pounding garlic in a mortar, while several cooking items lie around. An older woman with a pointed finger is seen either instructing her to work harder or to follow a spiritual path as shown by Mary’s devotion displayed in the scene from the New Testament in the background.
In depicting the scene, Velázquez relegates the main theme of the work into the distant background while giving primary focus to the human characters and food objects. This painting is also an early example of his treatment of using “paintings within the painting” that he would revisit in his later works such as the Las Menninas and The Spinners.
In 1624 Velázquez permanently moved to Madrid to serve as a court painter for King Philip IV. But he continued to be devoted to his Seville bodegan roots in creating paintings such as the Triumph of Bachhus (1628–29) and Vulcan’s Forge (1729–30). In both these works Velázquez juxtaposes mythic characters with ordinary people shunning the idealized approach where fabled figures were placed on a high pedestal. In the work Bacchus, the wine god rewards or gifts men with wine, and seems to approve of their revelry. The painting depicts members of the drinking party with an air of self-expression and individuality. In particular, the stares and subdued smiles of the two characters on Bacchus’ left project an uninhibited state of mind and enjoyment. They appear to be also inviting us to partake in their revelry. The image of this painting stays with us long in your memory. Perhaps we tend to see our self-reflection in these ordinary characters.
The joyous uninhibition displayed in Bacchus turns into rage and disbelief in Vulcan’s Forge (1630). In the work Apollo, with rays of light radiating from his head, suddenly appears in a foundry where various blacksmiths are at work. He discloses to Vulcan that his wife Venus has been in adulterous affair with Mars, the god of war, whose armor is being made at then foundry. The news elicits profound anger from Vulcan as expressed through his eyes. This anger in turn is magnified by the contour of his body and its muscles. Additionally, the hammer that Vulcan is holding onto and the red-hot piece of metal that he and others are working on heighten the feeling of rage. Velázquez composed this painting during his first trip in Italy. It clearly reveals traces of his study of classical sculptures and his mastery of transforming a sculpted human body as the bearer of emotions.
Velázquez as the official painter of the Spanish King (1624–1659)
From 1624 until his death in 1659 Velázquez served as the official painter in the Spanish court progressively moving up in status and rank. His talent and disposition endeared him to the King, earning Velázquez palace appointments that had been traditionally reserved for persons of upper ranks in society.
As a court painter, Velázquez displayed the same objectivity in portraying the royalty as he did in his paintings for the ordinary or the lowly. Far from being enthralled by pomp and power, Velázquez made his art to be about the individual of “flesh and bone,” to quote the words of the renowned Spanish philosopher and novelist Miguel de Unamuno
Velázquez painted dozens of portraits of King Philip IV during his long career at the royal court. Here are two portraits of the king that Velázquez created, one composed shortly after the king ascended the throne, the other towards the end of the king’s rule, Velázquez’s last painting of the monarch.
In both paintings Velázquez presents the king as an ordinary human being, far from any the trappings of power and authority. In the first painting, the king is featured in a thoughtful and somber mood, perhaps reflective of the newly acquired challenges of running a nation with formidable obstacles. In the second one Philip is presented as a vulnerable, melancholic, aged, and worn-out king. Philip’s reign overlapped with the steady decline of Spain’s predominance in Europe. By the 1640s Spain was on the verge of economic ruin. Velázquez’s portrait of Philip mirrors the loss of Spain’s fortunes.
‘Imitate nothing and nobody…paint all things as you see them.’
Velázquez’s approach of presenting the essence and inner core of a person is also pronounced in his paintings of court ‘dwarfs’ and jesters who had been in the service of the royal court. The roles of ‘dwarfs’ and jesters were to both provide company to young members of the royal family and entertain them as necessary. Jose Ortega y Gasset, the famous Spanish philosopher and essayist, thought of Velazquez’s paintings of these marginalized characters to be among his finest works. While Spanish court painters before Velázquez painted ‘dwarfs’ and jesters as comical figures to be either pitied or made fun of, Velazquez painted the handicapped with dignity worthy of respect as much as their masters. It has been rightly observed that in his treatment of the jesters and ‘dwarfs’, “Velázquez made extraordinary use of the freedom that such subjects afforded him in terms of composition, poses and expressions, making these works among the most extraordinary and artistically liberated in the history of portraiture.”
The Portrait of Sebastian de Morra stands out among all his ‘dwarf’ paintings with its power and forcefulness. The bold, dignified, and penetrating stare of Sebastián de Morra, a ‘dwarf’ and jester at the court of Philip IV, conveys the impression that he is as much a person of flesh and blood like any other human being and that no one needs to feel sorry for him. His attire indicates that he takes his responsibilities seriously and he is proud to be serving in the royal household. de Morra’s clenched fists conjure an image of a self-confident person speaking on behalf of all handicapped people and demanding to be treated as equally as any other ‘normal’ human being.
In The Boy from Vallecas, painted around the year 1638, Velazquez presents Francisco Lezcano, a ‘dwarf’ employed in the service of prince Baltasar Carlosthe, as a humanized individual. Young Lorenzo is shown in a hunting attire and holding playing cards in his hands. The boy’s expression of kindness and humility transcends his deformity. He conveys the feeling that instead of lamenting about any conceivable bodily limitation, we simply need to carry on with our duties, which in his case, involved accompanying and helping the king and his entourage on a hunting expedition. A fragment of the mountain landscape around Madrid — most likely that of the Sierra de Guadarrama mountain — beckons on the right of side of the portrait. “This fragment of landscape,” according to one assessment, “presents a blend of Velázquez´s remarkable capacity for synthesis as well as his desire to transmit lived experience.”
The Buffon Calabacillas is a portrait of Juan de Calabazas, a jester at the court of Philip IV. In the painting, Calabazas seems to suffer from mental illness. His faint smile and crossed eyes betray his insecurity as a court jester which likely stems from his job of pleasing others around him. By keeping his portrait blurred and ambiguous, Velazquez seems to indicate that it is the inner self, not outward appearance, that should define a person. Referring to the “semantic ambiguity” in the portrait of Calabazas, one critic has hailed it as “one of the most unique portraits produced in Europe at this period and among the finest examples of Velázquez’s independent thinking.”
Velázquez’s Italian trips and his masterpieces
During his career as a court painter, Velázquez made two trips to Italy, in 1629 and again in 1649–51. The purpose of these trips was both to buy works for the royal collection as well as to learn from the works of Italian masters. Velázquez produced at least two remarkable paintings of the gardens of Villa Medici in Rome during his first trip.
In Views of the Gardens of the Villa Medici, Velázquez depicts two scenes from the same garden. The first one depicts a scene against the background of midday sun filtering though the leaves in the foreground and landing on the cypress trees in the horizon. The other depicts a scene from the late evening as the setting sun illuminates the building with a strange glow against the dark-toned cypress trees.
Critics have hailed these paintings as “masterpieces in the Western landscape painting.” Indeed, what makes these paintings ahead of their times is that landscape until then had not been considered worthy of depiction unless it had been accompanied by religious narrative or some grandiose perspective. Equally important, both paintings capture the beauty of a certain moment against the fleeting and ephemeral time that no painter had tried to capture before. What also made Velazquez a pioneer in landscape painting was that while he composed these paintings on the spot, most other artists did their works in the confines of their studios. Even though these two paintings were to foreshadow works of 19th century artists such as Monet and other Impressionists, their true merit, as one observer has noted, “lies not in their role as precursors, but rather in their quality as artworks in which the artist expresses an original and highly personal concept of landscape.” Indeed, to quote art critic Laura Cumming, “to depict nature purely for itself, live and unadorned — in its natural state, as it were — was very much the innovation of Velázquez.”
It is interesting that early indications of Velázquez as an authentic landscape artists had already surfaced in the The Surrender of Breda (c. 1635) and Prince Baltasar Carlos on Horseback (1634–35). In the former, Velázquez’s realistic portrayal of the landscape heightens the momentary impact of a magnanimous surrender. In the latter, the cloud-covered sweeping landscape complements the steely and serious disposition of the prince on a horseback.
Velázquez’s second trip to Italy was also significant as it led to the creation of several masterpieces. During his visit Velázquez was commissioned to paint the portrait of Pope Innocent X, an unusual recognition for a Spanish painter. That Velázquez should have been given this rare honor at the expense of world-renowned Italian painters was extraordinary. Perhaps what triggered the assignment was Velazquez’s own painting of his half-Moorish servant and pupil Juan de Pareja that he composed both as a preparation for and proof of demonstrating that he was up to the task of painting the Pope. The final output as shown below literally created a sensation in the artistic community of Rome. When it was reportedly displayed as part of a larger exhibition of paintings at the Pantheon it was widely perceived that while “the other pictures in the show were art, but this one alone was truth.” The innocent, caring and reflective personality that this work projects makes it one of the most extraordinary portraits in western painting. After seeing de Pareja’s portrait, the Pope reportedly agreed to sit down for Velázquez.
Velázquez presented an unabashed and unflinching portrait of an aging Pope. In the painting Innocent X exudes a tough but intelligent and shrewd image. While the Pope was known as a mean-spirited person by many of his detractors, Velázquez’s psychological portrait offers a more complex perspective of the person who simultaneously comes across as serious, curious, and suspicious. The British painter Sir Joshua Reynolds called it “the finest picture in Rome.” The French historian Hippolyte Taine called it a masterpiece adding that “once seen, it is impossible to forget.” In fact, upon seeing his own portrait, Innocent X declared that it was “troppo vero,” or “very true” and even offered various gifts to Velázquez.
While still in Italy, Velázquez also composed The Toilet of Venus (circa 1650), also known as The Rokeby Venus. It was a daring and revolutionary work in Spanish art considering that it had come under the active surveillance of the Spanish Inquisition. It is very likely that Velázquez was inspired by the nude Venuses of Italian painters such as Giorgione and especially Titian whose works he admired. But as always, Velázquez’s Venus differs from the works of both painters in significant ways. If sensuality or voluptuousness define Giorgione’s and Titian’s Venuses, it’s aesthetics that inform Velázquez’s Venus. The reclining Venus is viewed from behind with her face getting reflected in a mirror held by cupid. Far from being an idealized goddess of sensual delights, Velázquez’s Venus is rather an ordinary, simple, all-too-human being. The painter keeps Venus’s face shadowy in the mirror as if he wanted to keep her identity mysterious and open to the viewer’s imagination.
The next nude in Spanish painting would have to wait for another century and half until Francisco Goya produced The Naked Maja.
The Last Years of Velázquez
While during the last years of his life Velázquez primarily devoted his time to paint royal members, he also composed Las Meninas and a lesser known but equally brilliant The Spinners. The Spinners is arguably the most complex and multilayered of his works. It captures the scene of women weavers at work in a tapestry workshop against the backdrop of a mythology articulated in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The characters from the mythology are presented in the raised platform with the helmet wearing goddess of wisdom Athena in a heated confrontation with Arachne about who was the greatest weaver in the world. They compete to showcase who could create a greater piece of work. Athena came up with a tapestry on the greatness of gods. In contrast, Arachne’s tapestry — displayed in the back wall — depicted the amorous adventures of Jupiter, the father of Athena, and the rape of Europa. This work infuriated Athena and culminated in her turning Arachne into a spider.
To add layers to the complexity of the work, the image of the tapestry bearing the image of The Rape of Europa was one that Titian had originally painted for Philip II. Later on, Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens also produced an exact copy of Titian’s original during his stay in Madrid in 1628–1629. As a painter of the Royal Court, Velázquez had been personally familiar with both of their works.
The last of Velázquez’s great compositions, The Spinners has been the subject of endless interpretations. While it is a superb blend of reality, illusion, and mythology, it is also a tribute to the hard work by women. Women, Velazquez is emphasizing, are equally capable of producing great works of art as are men. Ortega y Gasset called The Spinners the pinnacle of Velazquez’s works. Impressionists have found the work to be a unique atmospheric creation with its juxtaposition of a muted foreground with a background awash with sun light. Followers of abstract art have admired its treatment of space, motion, colors, and lines.
Interestingly, in real life Ovid’s experience also paralleled that of Arachne’s. He also faced the wrath of the Roman Emperor Augutus who considered his works to be degenerative and exiled him away to a foreign land for the rest of his life.
In 1659, the King made Velázquez a Knight of the Order of Santiago for his outstanding service to the Royal Court and his great contribution to the arts. In the same year, Velázquez composed a stand-alone portrait of Infanta Margarita, one of his last completed works.
Velázquez’s personal philosophy as an artist reaches its high point in this painting. The contrast between the eight-year-old Margarita’s pale and solemn face and the glitzy blue silk dress laced with ornate borders is very sharp. In the work, Velázquez might very well be implying that instead of being her own joyous and playful self, the child is simply being imprisoned and ensconced in the world of pomp and glitz of the royal household.
The end of a storied career
In 1660 Velázquez made one last voyage to the French frontier. A meeting between Philip IV and Louis XIV on June 1 in Pheasant Island, the river island between Spain and France, precipitated the trip. He returned from his voyage to Madrid sick and his health took a turn for the worse. He died on August 6, 1660, in the presence of his family, friends and his faithful pupil and friend Juan de Pareja.
Epilogue
It should become obvious from the foregoing analysis why a holistic assessment of Velázquez’s artistic contribution remains incomplete if we see him only through the lens of Las Meninas. A true and real appreciation of Velázquez is only possible through a review and analysis of his broad range of works. Each work of Velázquez stands out for its profound sensibility in capturing the complex emotional state of his subject matters. While Velázquez was inspired by other artists, in the end, the idiom, expression and sensibility of his works were purely his own. Small wonder that artists across the spectrum — from portrait to landscape artists, from impressionists to abstract artists, from cubists to surrealists — found inspiration from Velazquez’s works. Hence it is not surprising that Édouard Manet, the French avant-garde artist, called Velázquez “C’est le peintre des peintres,” (“the painter of painters.”)
It would be a pity if people should continue to measure Velázquez’s greatness through a single masterpiece.
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