1599-1660,Spanish painter. He was apprenticed to Francisco Herrera the Elder before being trained by Francisco Pacheco. His early works were mostly religious or genre scenes. After arriving in Madrid in 1623, he painted a portrait of Philip IV that won him immediate success and an appointment as court painter. His position gave him access to the royal collections, including works by Titian, who exerted the greatest influence on his style. In his portraits from this period, only the faces and hands of the figures are accentuated, and the dark figures stand out against a light background. A visit to Italy (1629 ?C 31) further developed his style, and on his return to Madrid he entered his most productive period. Velazquez created a new type of informal royal portrait for Philip hunting lodge, and his portraits of court dwarfs display the same discerning eye as those of his royal subjects. On a second visit to Rome (1649 ?C 51) he painted a portrait of Pope Innocent X. The powerful head, brilliant combinations of crimson of the curtain, chair, and cope are painted with fluent technique and almost imperceptible brushstrokes that go far beyond the late manner of Titian and announce the last stage in Velazquez development. This portrait was copied innumerable times and won him immediate and lasting renown in Italy. In his last years he created his masterpiece, Las Meninas (The Maids of Honour, 1656). In this casual scene, the artist is shown painting the king and queen in the presence of the infanta Margarita and her attendants; the nearly life size figures are painted in more or less detail according to their relation to the central figure of the infanta and to the source of light, creating a remarkable illusion of reality never surpassed by Velazquez or any other artist of his age. He is universally acknowledged as one of the giants of Western art.   Related Paintings of Velasquez :. | Juan Sebastian | St. Thomas | Jesus and Maria Mada at home | Abbot and hermit Paulo | The Warter-seller of Seville |
Related Artists:
Vaclav Vavrinec Reiner
(Czech: Vaclav Vavřinec Reiner; 8 August 1686 or 1689 - 9 October 1743) was a Baroque painter who lived and died in Prague, Bohemia.
henry mayhew
English journalist and sociologist. He studied law but soon turned to journalism. In 1841 he founded the highly successful Punch. A vivid and voluminous writer, he is best known for London Labour and the London Poor (1851 C 62), an evocation of the sights and sounds of the working-class districts of London, which influenced Charles Dickens and other writers. He also wrote plays, farces, fairy tales, and novels, some in collaboration with his brother Augustus Septimus Mayhew
Alessandro Magnasco
(February 4, 1667 - March 12, 1749), also known as il Lissandrino, was an Italian Rococo painter from Northern Italy. He is best known for stylized, fantastic, often phantasmagoric genre or landscape scenes.