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Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (baptised 6 June 1599 – 6 August 1660) was a Spanish Baroque painter, the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain and Portugal, and of the Spanish Golden Age. He is generally considered one of the greatest artists in the history of Western art.

He was an individualistic artist of the Baroque period (c. 1600–1750). He began to paint in a precise tenebrist style, later developing a freer manner characterized by bold brushwork. In addition to numerous renditions of scenes of historical and cultural significance, he painted scores of portraits of the Spanish royal family and commoners, culminating in his masterpiece Las Meninas (1656).

Velázquez's paintings became a model for 19th century realist and impressionist painters. In the 20th century, artists such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, and Francis Bacon paid tribute to Velázquez by reinterpreting some of his most iconic images.

Most of his work entered the Spanish royal collection, and by far the best collection is in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, although some portraits were sent abroad as diplomatic gifts, especially to the Austrian Habsburgs.

Early life

Velázquez was born in Seville, Spain, the first child of Juan Rodríguez de Silva, a notary, and Jerónima Velázquez. He was baptized at the Church of St. Peter in Seville on Sunday, 6 June 1599. The baptism most probably occurred a few days or weeks after his birth. His paternal grandparents, Diego da Silva and María Rodríguez, were Portuguese and had moved to Seville decades earlier. When Velázquez was offered knighthood in 1658, he claimed descent from the lesser nobility in order to qualify; however, his grandparents may have been tradespeople. Some authors have suggested that his grandparents were Jewish conversos. Rafael Cómez proposes Velázquez may have had Morisco lineage.

Raised in modest circumstances, he showed an early gift for art, and was apprenticed to Francisco Pacheco, an artist and teacher in Seville. An early 18th–century biographer, Antonio Palomino, said that Velázquez studied for a short time under Francisco de Herrera before beginning his apprenticeship under Pacheco, but this is undocumented. A contract signed on 17 September 1611, formalized a six-year apprenticeship with Pacheco, backdated to 10 December 1610, and it has been suggested that Herrera may have substituted for a traveling Pacheco between December 1610 and September 1611.

Although considered a dull and undistinguished painter, Pacheco sometimes expressed a simple, direct realism, though his work remained essentially Mannerist. As a teacher, he was highly learned and encouraged his students' intellectual development. In Pacheco's school, Velázquez studied the classics, was trained in proportion and perspective, and witnessed the trends in the literary and artistic circles of Seville.

On 23 April 1618, Velázquez married Juana Pacheco (1 June 1602 – 10 August 1660), the daughter of his teacher. They had two daughters. The elder, Francisca de Silva Velázquez y Pacheco (1619–1658), married painter Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo at the Church of Santiago in Madrid on 21 August 1633. The younger, Ignacia de Silva Velázquez y Pacheco, born in 1621, died in infancy.

Velázquez's earliest works are bodegones (kitchen scenes with prominent still-lifes). He was one of the first Spanish artists to paint such scenes, and his Old Woman Frying Eggs (1618) demonstrates the young artist's unusual skill in realistic depiction. The realism and dramatic lighting of this work may have been influenced by Caravaggio's work—which Velázquez could have seen second-hand, in copies—and by the polychrome sculpture in Sevillian churches. Two of his bodegones, Kitchen Scene with Christ in the House of Martha (1618) and Kitchen Scene with Christ at Emmaus (c. 1618), feature religious scenes in the background, painted in a way that creates ambiguity as to whether the religious scene is a painting on the wall, a representation of the thoughts of the kitchen maid in the foreground, or an actual incident seen through a window. The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception (1618–19) follows a formula used by Pacheco, but replaces the idealized facial type and smoothly finished surfaces of his teacher with the face of a local girl and varied brushwork. His other religious works include The Adoration of the Magi (1619) and Saint John the Evangelist on the Island of Patmos (1618–19), both of which begin to express his more pointed and careful realism.

Also from this period are the portrait of Sor Jerónima de la Fuente (1620)—Velázquez's first full-length portrait—and the genre painting The Waterseller of Seville (1618–1622), which has been termed "the peak of Velázquez's bodegones" and is admired for its virtuoso rendering of volumes and textures as well as for its enigmatic gravitas.

To Madrid (early period)

Velázquez had established his reputation in Seville by the early 1620s. He traveled to Madrid in April 1622, with letters of introduction to Don Juan de Fonseca, chaplain to the King. Velázquez was not allowed to paint the new king, Philip IV, but portrayed the poet Luis de Góngora at the request of Pacheco. The portrait showed Góngora crowned with a laurel wreath, which Velázquez later painted over. He returned to Seville in January 1623 and remained there until August.

In December 1622, Rodrigo de Villandrando, the king's favorite court painter, died. Velázquez received a command to come to the court from Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares, the powerful minister of Philip IV. He was offered 50 ducats (175 g of gold) to defray his expenses, and he was accompanied by his father-in-law. Fonseca lodged the young painter in his home and sat for a portrait, which, when completed, was conveyed to the royal palace. A portrait of the king was commissioned, and on 30 August 1623, Philip IV sat for Velázquez. The portrait pleased the king, and Olivares commanded Velázquez to move to Madrid, promising that no other painter would ever paint Philip's portrait and all other portraits of the king would be withdrawn from circulation. In the following year, 1624, he received 300 ducats from the king to pay the cost of moving his family to Madrid, which became his home for the remainder of his life.

Velázquez secured admission to the royal service with a salary of 20 ducats per month, lodgings and payment for the pictures he might paint. His portrait of Philip was exhibited on the steps of San Felipe and received with enthusiasm. It is now lost (as is the portrait of Fonseca). The Museo del Prado, however, has two of Velázquez's portraits of the king (nos. 1070 and 1071) in which the severity of the Seville period has disappeared and the tones are more delicate. The modeling is firm, recalling that of Antonio Mor, the Dutch portrait painter of Philip II, who exercised a considerable influence on the Spanish school. Velázquez depicts Philip wearing the golilla (es), a stiff linen collar projecting at right angles from the neck. The golilla replaced the earlier court fashion of elaborate ruffed collars as part of Philip's dress reform laws during a period of economic crisis.

The Prince of Wales (afterwards Charles I) arrived at the court of Spain in 1623. Records indicate that he sat for Velázquez, but the picture is now lost.

In 1627, Philip set a competition for the best painters of Spain with the subject to be the expulsion of the Moors. Velázquez won, with a painting (destroyed in a fire at the palace in 1734) which records say depicted Philip III pointing with his baton to a crowd of men and women being led away by soldiers, while the female personification of Spain sits in calm repose. Velázquez was appointed gentleman usher as reward. Later he also received a daily allowance of 12 réis, the same amount allotted to the court barbers, and 90 ducats a year for dress.

In September 1628, Peter Paul Rubens was positioned in Madrid as an…