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Diego Velazquez was the first great Spanish painter, and, for many major artists, particularly from the nineteenth century onwards, the most inspiring and relevant "old master" of all. His best-known work, Las Meninas, is often considered to be the world's greatest painting, a testament to Velazquez's technical brilliance. His daring, impressionistic brushwork conjures up exactly the gorgeous trappings of court life; ambiguous psychological undercurrents and intangible mood are created by clever, complex spatial arrangements, colour and lighting. We even suspect Velazquez of somehow pre-empting the invention of photography by catching the characteristic fleeting moment at the Spanish court with such immediacy. Las Meninas has provoked numerous philosophical interpretations by eminent thinkers, and forms part of the artistic consciousness of the entire modern period in painting. Picasso himself paid homage to the importance of the work in his 1957 Las Meninas series.
The celebrity status of this tour de force, although justified, perhaps tends to obscure other things that might interest us about Velazquez's art, like his unstinting truthfulness to the subject and deep respect and compassion for the individual. Velazquez's democratic approach to art transcended the artificial, stylized world defining his artistic opportunities and career, in which contrived appearances and rigid etiquette were overwhelmingly important. He created unpretentious, sympathetic and affecting images of often apparently insignificant and otherwise overlooked aspects of human life, which still have meaning for us today. Velazquez's somewhat deadpan, unobtrusive realism is also a fascinating contrast to the emotional overdrive in the idealized extravaganzas of his Baroque contemporaries. Kenneth Clark wrote of Velazquez: "his aim was simply to tell the whole truth about a complete visual impression."
Velazquez spent most of his working life at the court of King Philip IV, a main player in the Siglo de Oro - the "Golden Age" of Spanish painting in the first half of the seventeenth century. Under the enlightened patronage of the Habsburg monarchy, Spanish culture blossomed; Velazquez's contemporary was the celebrated writer Cervantes, author of Don Quixote. At the end of the sixteenth century, when Velazquez was born, Spain was the most powerful political entity in Europe, its influence and rule spreading far from the Iberian peninsula. Ironically, up till then, Spain had been largely dominated artistically by others - in particular by Italy. There had been few opportunities for Spanish artists to shine; its sixteenth century rulers, Philip II and III, connoisseurs of the arts, admired and collected works by mainly foreign painters, such as Titian, and local artists were treated as mere craftsmen, serving the needs of the rigidly prescriptive Catholic Church. Velazquez was the first Spanish artist to achieve international recognition - and his artistic life reflected his deep need for social status and nobility in his native country as a practising artist.
Velazquez was born in 1599 in Seville, a thriving commercial city with its own artistic identity. He lived and studied in Seville with the painter Francisco Pacheco, whose studio was at the centre of artistic and intellectual life in the city. Velazquez married his daughter Juana in 1618. Velazquez at first painted in the Seville tradition of bodegones, - realistic, closely observed studies of kitchen and tavern scenes, influenced by Flemish painting of everyday life. He gave the ordinariness of these an unusual significance and psychological intensity with dramatic lighting and sensitive use of colour and tone. His teacher wrote that these works were "deserving of the highest esteem. From these beginnings and in his portraits. . .he hit upon the true imitation of nature." In 1618 Velazquez painted the symbolic Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, creating out of a kitchen tableau a religious work full of meaning. Velazquez's innovative approach to the Christian theme is to let the ordinary kitchen people, rather than the biblical figures, dominate the scene.
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