VELÁZQUEZ, Diego Rodriguez de Silva y, Featured Paintings in Detail(2)

VELÁZQUEZ, Diego Rodriguez de Silva y
Featured Paintings in Detail
(2)

The Surrender of Breda (Las Lanzas)
1634-35
Oil on canvas, 307 x 367 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

The Surrender of Breda (Las Lanzas) (detail)
1634-35

The Fable of Arachne (Las Hilanderas)
c. 1657

(detail)
c. 1657

Venus at her Mirror (The Rokeby Venus)
1649-51
Oil on canvas, 122,5 x 177 cm
National Gallery, London

(detail)
1649-51
Oil on canvas, 122,5 x 177 cm
National Gallery, London

Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Blue Dress
1659
Oil on canvas, 127x 107 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (history:
donated 1659 by the spanish King Philipp II.
to the Court in Vienna)

(detail)
1659
Oil on canvas, 127x 107 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

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Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Blue Dress is one of the best known portraits by Spanish painter Diego Velázquez. Executed in oil on canvas, it measures
127 cm high by 107 cm wide and was one of Velázquez's last paintings, produced in 1659, a year before his death. It shows Margaret Theresa of Spain
who also appears in the artist's Las Meninas. Currently, the painting is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum.
This is one of the several court portraits made by Velázquez on different occasions of Infanta Margaret Theresa who, at fifteen, married her uncle,
Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor. She's the little infanta who appears in Las Meninas (1656). These paintings show her in different stages of her
childhood; they were sent to Vienna to inform Leopold of what his young fiancée looked like.
The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna has two other outstanding paintings by Velázquez: Infanta Maria Teresa and Prince Philip Prospero. However,
this portrait of Infanta Margarita is possibly the best of the three.
In this portrait, Velázquez used the technique of loose brushstrokes that fuse into coherence only when viewed from a certain distance. The infanta, here
eight years old, is shown with a solemn expression. She wears a blue silk dress which is adorned with silver borders after the Spanish fashion of the
era; the most striking characteristic is the huge expanse of the voluminous crinoline which is accentuated by the trimmed borders and the wide lace
collar. In one of her hands she holds a brown fur muff, perhaps a present from Vienna. The young girl, who is presented as pretty and appealing, has a
pale countenance which is enhanced by the blue and silver tones. In the background, there is a high console table with a round mirror behind it.

For reasons of religious scruple, the female nude was rarely represented in Spanish art, although the royal collection was rich in mythological nudes by Titian and other Venetian
Renaissance masters. The Toilet of Venus, called the 'Rokeby Venus' after Rokeby Hall in Yorkshire where it hung in the nineteenth century, is the only surviving picture of this kind by
Velázquez - one other, now lost, is recorded - and remained unique in Spain until Goya depicted the Naked Maja, which was probably inspired by it. Painted either just before or during
Velázquez's second visit to Italy in 1648-52, the Venus was recorded in 1651 in the collection of the young son of Philip IV's prime minister, famous both for his womanising and his
patronage of art. He was later to become Marqués of Carpio and later still Viceroy of Naples, and it must have been his standing at court which enabled him to commission such a
painting without fear of the Inquisition.
If the subject of this picture is a conflation of the Venetian Renaissance inventions of 'Venus at her mirror with Cupid' and 'Reclining Venus', its all-pervasive theme is reflection. Venus
reflects on her beauty, reflected in the mirror; since we can dimly see her face, we know that ours can be seen by her, and she may be thought to reflect on the effect her beauty has on
us. Velázquez has reflected long before his canvas and the living model - for this girl, with her small waist and jutting hip, does not resemble the fuller, more rounded Italian nudes
inspired by ancient sculpture, and she wears her hair in a modern style. Only the presence of the plumply and innocently deferential Cupid transforms her into a goddess. The painter
has moulded her body with infinitely scrupulous and tender gradations of colour, white, pink, grey and muted black and red, and the grey-black satin which reflects on her luminous skin
itself shimmers with pearly reflections of flesh-tones. Streaks of pink, white and grey loop in ribbons around the ebony frame of the mirror. Even more astonishing is the single
brushstroke, laden with black paint, tracing the line that runs beneath her body from the middle of the back to below her calf. Both the exact notation of appearance and such free and
spontaneous touches are the fruit of lengthy meditation and practice.
The very genesis of the painting may have been an act of reflection. The suggestion has been made that it was designed as a harmonious contrast to a nude Danaë (later transformed
into a Venus) attributed to Tintoretto. By 1677 both were incorporated, probably as a pair, in the decoration of a ceiling in one of Carpio's palaces. The Danaë-Venus, recently
rediscovered in a private collection in Europe, is of nearly identical dimensions and a virtual mirror image of Velázquez's Venus: the figure reclining in a landscape in the same pose, but
facing the viewer, and on red drapery. The witty reversal echoes Titian's procedure in the mythological poesie ('poems') painted for Philip IV's grandfather Philip II and still in the royal
collection, in which he promised to show the different aspects of the naked female form. But, typically of Velázquez, in this haunting successor to the more sensuous and exuberant
Renaissance works, the narrative and the poetry consist in the act of looking and being looked at.
During the Inquisition pictures were censored and artists who painted licentious or immoral paintings were excommunicated, fined very heavily and banished. Rather than punish so
notable an artist as Velázquez, his Venus was accepted. Cupid and the face to be seen in the looking-glass were, in all probability, strongly overpainted in the eighteenth century.

Las Hilanderas is one of the most famous of the paintings by Velázquez. In its composition, the artist looks back to his bodegones, where two
different areas and two planes of reality balance each other.
The everyday scene in the foreground shows a plainly furnished room where women are at work spinning. On the left, an elderly woman is at the
spinning wheel, while the young woman seated to the right is winding yam. Three other women are bringing more wool and sorting through the
remnants. There is a second room in the background, in an alcove reached by steps. It is flooded with light and contains several elegantly dressed
women.
The woman on the left wearing an antique helmet and with her arm raised is a figure of Athena. Opposite her stands the young Arachne, who has
committed the sacrilegious act of comparing her skill in weaving with the goddess's. She has begun their competition with a tapestry showing one
of the love affairs of Jupiter, the rape of Europa.

The Surrender of Breda (Las Lanzas)
In the throne-room of Buen Retiro where courtly ceremony was displayed to the full, symbolically representing the monarchy to the outside world, there
were twelve battle scenes showing the latest victories won under Philip IV.
All the military paintings follow the same standard pattern: they banish war itself to the background and show the victorious commanders full-length in
the foreground, where the figures of rulers are usually placed in other works.Most of the battle pieces have been painted by Eugenio Cajes and Vicente
Carducho, and their assistants. They are not particularly original, unlike The Surrender of Breda, the contribution by Velázquez.
In this painting Velázquez makes a fundamental statement about humane conduct amidst the horrors of war. Many contemporary witnesses felt sure that
the long struggle for the Netherlands would determine the future position of Spain as a world power.
The most important fortress in the southern Netherlands was Breda in Brabant, and the strategic significance of the place was correctly assessed by
Philip IV's best commander in the Thirty Years' War, Ambrosio Spinola. The commander of the fortress on the opposite side, Justinus of Nassau, was
another military man famous throughout Europe. After a four-month siege and when all the provisions in the fortress had run out, he was forced to
petition for an honourable surrender. Spinola allowed him to leave under conditions that were extremely generous for the period.
Velázquez represents Spinola as having dismounted from hid horse to meet the Dutch commander on equal footing. Instead of accepting the token of
surrender, he places a hand on the Dutchman's shoulder, offering a consolation of one soldier to another.

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (baptized on June 6, 1599 – August 6, 1660) was
a Spanish painter, the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV, and one of the most
important painters of the Spanish Golden Age.
He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period, important as a
portrait artist. In addition to numerous renditions of scenes of historical and cultural
significance, he painted scores of portraits of the Spanish royal family, other notable
European figures, and commoners, culminating in the production of his masterpiece
Las Meninas (1656).
From the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Velázquez's artwork was a model for
the realist and impressionist painters, in particular Édouard Manet. Since that time,
famous modern artists, including Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Francis Bacon,
have paid tribute to Velázquez by recreating several of his most famous works.

VELÁZQUEZ, Diego Rodriguez de Silva y, Featured Paintings in Detail(2)

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VELÁZQUEZ, Diego Rodriguez de Silva y, Featured Paintings in Detail(2)