Velazquez, Diego

Velazquez: The Technique of Genius

In this volume, an art historian and a conservation scientist discuss the techniques Velazquez created in order to realize his artistic vision. Examining 30 works by Velazquez that span his entire career, the authors show how his technical achievement developed over time.

Diego Velazquez: 1599-1660; The Face of Spain (Basic Art)

Acclaimed for its blending of realism with atmosphere, and for its deeply sensitive appreciation of character, the work of Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez represents the undeniable pinnacle of the golden age of Spanish painting. Born in Seville but of Portuguese origin, he became court painter to Philip IV in 1623. A steady worker, using primarily sombre low-toned colouring, he met Rubens in 1628, and soon after made a first trip to Italy. The pictures painted there reveal a growing interest in both colour range and in the male nude. He only returned to Italy once again in the late 1640s, where he painted his famous portrait of Pope Innocent X and his only female nude, the "Rokeby Venus". But his greatness lies perhaps in his empathetic studies of such characters as the dwarf playmates of the royal children. The weathering of the skin, rags and mortality, as well as the ageing face of the despondent monarch increasingly preoccupied him in later years. The power, insight and brilliant technique of these paintings were to prove profoundly influential on such later artists as Manet, Delacroix, Picasso and Bacon.

Velazquez: Painter and Courtier

Offers a detailed biography of the seventeenth century Spanish painter, looks at all of his paintings, and discusses the original technique Velazquez developed for his art.

Velazquez (Ediciones Poligrafia)

Like his Dutch contemporary Vermeer, Diego Velazquez (1599-1660) had little reputation outside of his native land until the nineteenth century, when the Spanish royal painting collections became state property and were installed in the Prado Museum in Madrid. The year was in 1819, and several private and official collections in London and Paris also benefited. Unlike Vermeer, however, Velazquez had a fairly large oeuvre waiting to be rediscovered--and rediscovered it was, with great rapidity and enthusiasm. Goya and Manet are almost inconceivable without the precedent of Velazquez's portraiture, and in fact Manet even called the Spaniard "the painter of painters." His impact on French Impressionism was colossal. And two of the twentieth century's most famous artists painted direct homages: Picasso made a version of "Las Meninas" in 1957; and Francis Bacon's "screaming popes" are based on Velazquez's 1650 portrait of Pope Innocent X. From Goya until today, Velazquez's work has been recognized not only as the essential forerunner to Modern painting, but also as the greatest exponent of seventeenth-century Spanish art.

Manet/Velazquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting (Metropolitan Museum of Art Series)

After an exhausting trip to Madrid to see paintings by Diego Velásquez, Édouard Manet declared in a letter that the seventeenth-century master was "the greatest artist," He was also the greatest influence on Manet, whose bold handling of color and space had revolutionized figure painting. Manet/Velásquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting accompanied an landmark exhibition that opened in Paris in 2002 and traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Lavishly illustrated--with nearly 400 color reproductions and more than 300 in black-and-white--the book is a consolation prize for art lovers who missed the show. Actually, the Manet-Velásquez connection is just one aspect of this wide-ranging survey of French 19th-century culture, bolstered by a detailed chronology. (This inclusive outlook even extends to the influence of Spanish painting on nineteenth-century American artists.) Most essays are packed with scholarly details likely to be of more interest to specialists than to the general reader. Still, the historical outline is intriguing. For generations, the only foreign artists the French thought worthy of interest were the Italians and the Dutch. Napoleon changed all that, inadvertently, when he invaded Spain and brought back artistic plunder for the fledgling Louvre. Although the museum's Spanish art holdings subsequently had a checkered history, the die was cast. French Romantic artists and poets found a soul mate in Goya, the eighteenth-century artist whose hallucinatory vision and social commentary seemed tailor-made for the 1830s. Three decades later, the shrewd pictorial intelligence of Velásquez was the key that unlocked a new directness in art. —Cathy Curtis

In 1804, at the dawn of the French Empire, there were no more than a handful of Spanish paintings in public collections in France. During the course of the 19th century, however, French collectors and museums assembled substantial holdings of works by such Spanish masters as Velazquez, El Greco, Zurbaran, Murillo and Goya. At the same time, French writers and artists - among them Delacroix, Gericault, Courbet, Millet, Bonnat, Degas, and, especially, Manet - came to understand, appreciate and even emulate Spanish painting of the Golden Age. This volume features over 150 works by French and Spanish artists, charting the development of this cultural influence and mapping a fascinating shift in the paradigm of painting: from Idealism to Realism, from Italy to Spain, from Renaissance to Baroque. Above all, it demonstrates how direct contact with Spanish painting fired the imagination of 19th-century French artists and brought about the triumph of Realism in the 1860s, and with it a foundation for modern art. American artists of the second half of the 19th century often turned to Europe for training and inspiration. Whistler, Cassatt, Eakins, Chase and Sargent all travelled to Spain for firsthand exposure to its artistic heritage and experienced the thrill of discovering Spanish painting. Also included in this volume are works by American artists that reflect the pervasive influence of and taste for Spanish painting.

The Vexations of Art: Velazquez and Others

Velazquez (Rizzoli Art Classics)

The Rizzoli Art Classics series brings you Piero della Francesca, Titian, Caravaggio, and Velázquez, all in beautifully illustrated monographs, offering high-quality reproductions in compact, accessible volumes. These books feature a literary introduction by a renowned art historian, a thoroughly researched essay, and captions describing the artist's most famous canvases. A useful appendix section includes an extensive chronology of the artist's life and important historical events of his time; a compilation of writings by well-known historians, insight into each painter's stylistic development; a geographical table detailing the location of each painting in the book; and a concise bibliography with suggested further readings.With authoritative text by leading art historians, these lavishly illustrated editions provide fresh insight into the art and lives of some of the most fascinating artists in the history of painting.

Masters of Art: Velazquez (Masters of Art)

Velazquez

Velázquez's 'Las Meninas' (Masterpieces of Western Painting)

Velázquez's 1656 masterpiece Las Meninas has inspired an avalanche of published attention since it was first placed on public view in the Museo del Prado in 1819. The essays in this volume survey the responses to the painting in the nineteenth century, when Velázquez's fame outside Spain peaked. They include introductions to interpretations of Las Meninas by twentieth-century art historians, critics, philosophers, and art theorists, as well as the modern appropriation of the work by Picasso.

Velázquez's, 1656 masterpiece, Las Meninas has inspired an avalanche of published attention since it was first placed on public view in the Museo del Prado in 1819. The essays in this volume offer a survey of the responses to the painting in the nineteenth century, when Velázquez's fame outside Spain peaked, as well as introductions to the interpretations of Las Meninas by twentieth-century art historians, critics, philosophers, and art theorists. Attention is also given to the modern appropriation of the work by Pablo Picasso and artists working today.