Diego Velazquez was born in Seville in 1599.At this time this Spanish city had much wealth and vitality. Velazquez’ paintings were in the pantheon of Baroque art along with great artists such as Rubens, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Bernini and Poussin. Baroque style was a radical change in Spanish painting which took place in the second half of seventeenth-century. Before hand the style was naturalism, where as Baroque was colourful and decorative.

Velazquez’ paintings had great realism and inventive iconography, he understood his vocation as a painter, and it is said he was the greatest painter of seventeenth-century Spain. His career began first of all with Francisco Herrera at aged ten thereafter he joined leading theorist and aesthetician Francisco Pacheco. His was a school which housed the greatest minds in Seville Velazquez served a six year apprenticeship here.

During his time there still life paintings were very popular, these bodegüns often came with symbolic meaning within a domestic subject matter, some also contain

During his time there, of the dignitaries who visited the Spanish court it was Peter Paul Rubens; Flemish artist-diplomat who seems to have had the greatest influence on Velazquez. During Rubens seven month stay there in 1628 he toured the royal collections with Velazquez, within two months of Rubens leaving Velazquez left for Italy ‘to perfect his art’. He landed in Genoa in 1629, proceeded to Venice then to Rome. When in Rome he gained access to the most renowned artistic circles including membership of the ‘Accademia di San Luca’ and the society of the Virtuosi at the Pantheon.

On his return from Italy there was a noted change in his work, in his early years his work was natural and real but not perfect, he painted people as he did objects making them rather emotionless. In ‘An old woman cooking eggs’ we see he had trouble grasping linear perspective where there is an array of articles on an impossibly tilted board behind the woman, all of this changed though when he returned from Italy. Velazquez had developed a new understanding of anatomy; Velazquez learned to engage the mind as well as the eye. Also his pallet became more luminous. In his life Velazquez visited Italy twice this kept alive the tradition of cultural exchange between Spain and Italy.

Some topics in this essay:
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