Diego Velázquez Paintings

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Biography of Diego Velázquez

(June 6 1599 - August 6 1660)
Full name is Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, pronunciation is [ˈdjeɣo roˈðriɣeθ de ˈsilba i βeˈlaθkeθ] in Spanish; was often spelled as Diego Velazquez, Velasquez.
Movement: Baroque
Famous Works: Las Meninas; Rokeby Venus; The Surrender of Breda.

Diego Velázquez was born in Seville, Spain, presumably shortly before his baptism on June 6, 1599. The young Velazquez artist once declared, "I would rather be the first painter of common things than second in higher art." He learned much from studying nature. Finally he became the Spain's greatest painter, also one of the supreme artists of all time. A master of technique, highly individual in style, Diego Velazquez may have had a greater influence on European art than any other painters.

After his marriage at the age of 19, painter Velazquez went to Madrid. When he was 24 he painted a portrait of Philip IV, who became his patron.
The artist made two visits to Italy. On his first, in 1629, he copied masterpieces in Venice and Rome. Diego Velázquez returned to Italy 20 years later and bought many paintings, by Titian, Tintoretto, and Paolo Veronese, and statuary for the king's collection.
Except for these journeys Velasquez painter lived in Madrid as court painter. Paintings of Velasquez include landscapes, mythological and religious subjects, and scenes from common life, called genre pictures. Most of them, however, are Velazquez portrait of court notables that rank with the portraits painted by Titian and Anthony Van Dyck.

Duties of his royal offices also occupied his time. Diego Velazquez was eventually made marshal of the royal household, and as such he was responsible for the royal quarters and for planning ceremonies.
In 1660 artist Velazquez had charge of his last and greatest ceremony--the wedding of the Infant Maria Theresa to Louis XIV of France. This was a most elaborate affair. Worn out from these labors, Diego Velázquez contracted a fever from which he died on August 6.

He was called the "noblest and most commanding man among the artists of his country." Velasquez artistwas a master realist, and no painter has surpassed him in the ability to seize essential features and fix them on canvas with a few broad, sure strokes. "His men and women seem to breathe," it has been said; "his horses are full of action and his dogs of life."
Because of his great skill in merging color, light, space, rhythm of line, and mass in such a way that all have equal value, Diego Velázquez was known as "the painter's painter." Ever since he taught Bartolomé Murillo, painter Velasquez has directly or indirectly led artists to make original contributions to the development of art.

Others who have been noticeably influenced by him are Francisco de Goya, Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet,Edouard Manet, and James McNeill Whistler. Famous Diego Velazquez works include The Surrender of Breda, an equestrian portrait of Philip IV, The Spinners, The Maids of Honor, Pope Innocent X, Christ at Emmaus, and a portrait of the Infanta Maria Theresa.
As court painter to Philip IV, Diego Velázquez spent a large part of his life recording, in his cool, detached way, the objective appearance of this rigidly conventional royal household, with little interpretation but with the keenest eye for selecting what was important for pictorial expression and with a control of paint to secure exactly the desired effect. Through acquaintance, while in Italy, with the painting of Caravaggio and through contact with the Spaniard Jusepe de Ribera (1588-1656), Diego Velazquez painter learned something of the potentialities of a very limited palette, black and neutrals, as is evident in many of his portraits, which are subtle harmonies of grays and blacks.
In Diego Velazquez artwork these royal portraits, whatever interpretation he made or whatever emotional reaction he experienced kept to himself. Royalty, courtliness of the most rigid character was his task to portray, not individual personality. However, the Velazquez portrait of Innocent X leads on to suspect that there might have been more interpretation had the painter Diego Velázquez been free to express it.
Through his practice of using pigment as it is used in Maids of Honor, and Innocent X, in short or long, thin or thick, apparently hasty and spontaneous but actually most skillfully calculated strokes, Diego Velázquez was a forerunner of the modern practice or direct painting.