Original subtitles

As many of the great painters of the last two centuries, who's the greatest portrait

painter of the Mall, and they'd answer without hesitation, Velázquez, an artist who

transformed both the image of the 17th century Spanish royal court, and the process of

painting itself, with a degree of realism that had never been seen before.

Diego Velázquez' de Silva was born in Seville in 1599.

This was a Spain whose aristocracy was still luxuriating in the wealth from Columbus's

discovery of the Americas, just over a hundred years earlier. His middle-class parents had

tenuous aristocratic connections, so it was considered unusual for some of his background

to take up the craft of painting. Painting was seen as a lowly trade in Spain,

on the same level as farmhand or blacksmith. But Velázquez was educated, and this

is on. At the age of 11, he became an apprentice to this local painter Francisco Pacheco,

with whom he went to live for six years, and it was here that he began to learn the trade of

painting. This is Velázquez' first great painting, and in fact it's a great painting by any standards,

but even more so when you realise that he was barely 20 when he did it. It's called

the water cellar of Seville, and it shows a simple, every day scene of a man selling water

to two other men. Now, there's a guy here in the foreground is youthful. He has the glass in his

hand in the background. You can just see emerging out of this extraordinary darkness, a figure

who is drinking, and then illuminated in an almost theatrical way the water cellar himself.

And some critics have read this as an allegory, the three ages of man, from youth to adulthood,

to old, or middle age, and maturity. Now, this type of painting is called

Abode Hone, which means literally, chop house or tavern in Spanish art, and it's a scene of

tavern life. Now, in Spanish literature, the water cellar is usually a symbol or a character of

low life. But what does Velázquez do? He shows him an idealised certainly, but not as a villain,

he shows him as a man with quiet dignity, a real man, an honourable man going about his daily

life, and that graphics and surrealism is utterly unprecedented in the art of Seville.

His teacher, Pacheca, was well-connected, and this proved vital for Velázquez's future success,

bringing him to attention of the Count Duke Olivearis, a patron of the arts, and a very powerful

chief minister to the young King Philip IV. Olivearis shows an interest in the Pacheca's talents

of the young Velázquez, and new of his ambition to become a court painter. So, in 1623,

when one of the six court painters died, leaving a vacancy, Olivearis permitted the 24-year-old

to make the journey to the new capital Madrid, to meet the King, and to paint his portrait.

This full-length portrait of King Philip was one of Velázquez's first court commissions.

It would have been a daunting task. The King was already the most powerful man in Europe,

and Velázquez was a young and inexperienced artist. It's an imposing picture, though.

The way that the young Philip still in his teens would have appeared to visitors,

a loof and without expression. The King is wearing a somber outfit,

which suited Velázquez's own style at the time, which was dominated by a sober palette

of browns, blacks, grays and whites. But as well as capturing the King's distinctive image,

with his pronounced Habsburg jaw, the picture fulfills a function, to communicate the position

of the new King to everyone who looks at the painting. The King's right hand holds a piece of paper

symbolising his administrative duties. His left hand rests on a sword, emblematic of his role as

Fender of the Nation. The picture is important on a personal level for Velázquez, too.

It marks the beginning of a long and potent relationship between monarch and painter.

Velázquez produced numerous portraits for the King over the next few years,

redefining the royal image as the Duke Oliveira is intended. They were images of Kingship

as much as a particular King. The effect was like a modern-day public relations exercise,

promoting Philip to his subjects as a capable and suitable leader,

presenting him in armour and out hunting. Philip IV that inherited a Vars collection of

priceless art from his grandfather Philip II, including an unrivaled collection of Titian's works.

As a result, the young monarch's interest in knowledge of the visual arts began to grow.

Incredibly for a court painter, Velázquez was given a studio in the royal residence of the

Alkazar, sandwiched between the apartments of Olivearis and the King. The preferential treatment

of Velázquez was a saving at court, started to generate a good deal of jealousy around the

place, particularly from other painters, who spread the rumor that Velázquez could only do

heads. The King rightly confronted Velázquez about this, and he shrugged his shoulders and said,

they flatter me I'm not sure anyone could do heads particularly well, but in turn Philip IV decided

to call everyone's bluff by holding a competition, which has become one of the more celebrated

mythologised events in the history of 17th century art. The competition itself was quite complex,

it involved a commission to paint a painting for the Alkazar palace that showed Philip III

Philip IV's father, expelling the mors from Spain. There were three other court painters involved,

and the two judges were well versed in recent developments in arts, and favored the style of

painting that was being undertaken by Velázquez. In the end therefore, there could only be one winner.

And sometime in the middle of 1627, Velázquez was Julie proclaimed victorious, and from then on in,

his position as court painter was virtually unassailable.

I think Velázquez gets the job best.

But for the ambitious Velázquez, the turning point in his career was yet to happen.

He was 29 when he met the great painter and diplomat of the Spanish Netherlands, Peter Paul Rubens.

Recent years in Europe had seen much political wrangling between the courts of England,

France, and Spain, so Rubens had been sent by the governor of the Spanish Netherlands

to lay the groundwork for a peace treaty with England. Rubens found time out from his

diplomatic mission to study the art collection of King Philip IV, and Velázquez accompanied him,

seeing the more experienced artist as the perfect role model, an ambitious courtier and a successful

painter. And utterly motivated by Rubens, Velázquez requested leave from the court in 1629

to go to Italy and to broaden his artistic knowledge beyond the horizons of the royal collection.

He spent most of his time in Rome, seeing the splendors of Renaissance and classical art

and architecture. The lessons that he learned in Italy are evident in this painting,

the forge of Velcan, produced in Roman 1630. It's a mythological scene, a polo appears before

Velcan to warn him of his wife's infidelity with Marz, the god of war. In a wonderfully frozen moment,

the workers stopped dead in their tracks as they listened with disbelief to the revelation.

It's here that we can see the creative genius of Velázquez. The bodies of pure classical

creations inspired by his findings in Italy, by his studies of classical sculpture. But the

faces and the expressions show Velázquez' developing brand of naturalism.

Their reactions range from outright shock to disbelief, but it's done in a restrained way,

all the emotion is shown on the face, in the eyes, with a subtle tilt of the head,

or a wrinkled brow. By studying directly from nature and not by rehashing the conventional

ideas and techniques of painting, Velázquez had done what many others had failed to do,

breathe life and tangible emotion into the painted figure. In 1631, Velázquez returned to Spain,

an embarked on the most productive period of his career. The conjugal evaries had just presented

the Spanish monarchy with another palace in tribute to them that when Retiro, and that palace

needed decorating, and Velázquez was heavily involved. In the new vast hall of realms, 12

battle scenes were commissioned, the most powerful of which was this one by Velázquez.

It shows the surrender of Brader an event that had taken place in 1625 when the Dutch city

surrendered to the Spanish forces, so it's a relatively recent event, and the painting has

something of the feel of a documentary about it, but Velázquez's queues events to make a moral

and political point. At the centre of the painting, at the two commanders. On the right-hand side,

is the Spanish general Spinolla. On the left-hand side, the celebrated Dutch commander just in

of Nassau. Now, it never actually happened that just in of Nassau presented the keys to the city.

Instead, the Dutch forces left after three days. Also, it never would have happened that the Spanish

general would have got off its horse and been on the same level as the Dutch commander. But what

this shows is the generosity of spirit of the Spaniards, and it's a shivalry image of the moral

superiority of Catholic Spain. Look at the way that the general puts his hand consolingly on the

shoulders of the man that he's just defeated. The way that Velázquez makes this painting successful

is by focusing on the figures. He's identifying or empathizing once again with a common man.

But he also drifts in and out of focus in the way that he paints them, rather in the manner

that we experience looking at a crowd of people. Sometimes people's faces are in sharp relief,

on other occasions they fade into the distance. And there's another nice little touch from Velázquez.

On the extreme right-hand side of the painting, Claude and a rather elegant greyy green jacket

and hat topped with a little white feather is a self-portrait of Velázquez himself looking out

us as we look at his work. And then in the foreground, in the extreme right-hand corner,

is a blank piece of paper that's been discarded there. This is where Velázquez should sign his

name, but by this stage in his career, authorship is self-evident, and he's already emerging,

not just as a confident artist, but as a cocky one too. During the 1630s, portraits of the king

and the role family form the chief part of Velázquez's work. But he also painted portraits of

onbreda plethora, the dwarfs and buffoons of the court. These entertainers amuse the king with

magic tricks, jokes, and general tomfoolery. Somewhere disabled, like the jester calabathas,

who Velázquez painted with great empathy. And in his portrait of Sebastian de Mora,

he portrays someone of considerable intelligence, this dignity, even defiance in his pose,

and then intensity in his eyes. In these portraits, Velázquez loosens his technique.

The face is modelled close to perfection, but he paints the clothes and the background with

much more freedom, so that nothing competes with the confrontational gaze.

The decade of the 40s was a bitter and turbulent time for the king,

revolts were occurring both in Portugal and Northern Spain. The Canjig Oliveras had fallen from

grace, and the king had him exiled. The powerful Spanish empire had begun to decline.

It was also a time of great personal tragedy for the king. In 1644, his wife Queen Isabella died,

followed two years later by their son, Balthazar Carlos. Velázquez had painted numerous portraits

of the young prince, including this one, which stands out from many of his other equestrian portraits

in its use of luminous colours, which give a monumental pose a lightness of touch.

It was a quiet time for Velázquez, as far as painting for the court was concerned,

but Philippe had other ideas for the artist. Velázquez was ordered to visit Italy,

his mission, to acquire more works for the royal collection, and hunt out young talented artists

to paint frescoes for the Alcazar. Velázquez's year-in-room led to some staggering achievements,

notably in the field of portraiture, beginning with this work. It's a portrait of one de Paraja,

who was Velázquez's assistant. He was known as an artist slave, not an uncommon phenomenon,

in 17th century Spain. This was the man that crushed his paints that prepared his canvases,

but he was also an artist on the quiet, a frustrated artist who, Ruma has it,

slipped his own pictures into Velázquez' studio one time, and when the king Philip IV of Spain saw

the work, so that this could never be the work of a slave and so, according to Ruma,

he lost his status as a slave and gained his freedom. We don't know whether that's true or not,

but we certainly know that from the way Velázquez painted him, he was a man who Velázquez had

a huge respect for, because this is an enobling picture. He's almost a latter-day a fellow,

this is a man of moreish extraction, who is painted wearing an ornate lace collar and a large

chunky belt that amplified a status well beyond that of a slave. He also has these wonderfully

piercing eyes that stare out and confront the viewer with a kind of noble disdain.

The crucial thing about the picture is the way it's painted and how Velázquez

using only four different shades of colour, from white to grey to brown to black. Managers to

produce what is in effect a symphony of mute colours. He brings them absolutely to life.

The background is done with brushstrokes that you can barely see, but as you get closer to the

most more markedly, there's this layering or washing of different colours and look here at

the sleeve. Now this is velvet. When you get closer what you see are these slightly scumble

brushstrokes of grey over the top of this dark brownie black surface. And that gives the

effect of light dancing on the sleeves and when you move away there's this sense of lush texture.

And the response to this painting was very strong. It was shown in an exhibition in the pantheon

in Rome in 1650. And a number of artists from all over the world who were there in Rome, which was

this mecca for art, came to look at the exhibition and said according to Velázquez's biographer,

Palamino, that most of the work in the exhibition was just art, but this was truth.

Now we can still admire this work now in the 21st century. But what's extraordinary about it

is that it was only an exercise for Velázquez and that the real big work was just around the corner.

This is Pope innocent the 10th, one of the most powerful men in Christendom.

Velázquez's royal links meant that he had access to the Vatican and an opportunity to meet this

imposing figure face-to-face and then to paint him. Velázquez depicts innocent slightly

turning away from the viewer in order to emphasise his remoteness from the mortal world, but he

also seems to have got under the people's skin and shows a mere man, impatient and slightly irritable.

A reminder that Velázquez would have been granted very little time in which to capture

a physical lightness. His use of color is remarkable as his depiction of texture

has in the portrait of Juan de Paréja, which he creates with a very limited palette.

With only tons of red and creamy white, he distinguishes masterfully the satin of his cap,

the rich velvet of the cloth on the background and the glistening ruddy skin of his face.

It's one of Velázquez's most celebrated works. Francis Bacon, one of the great painters

of the 20th century, who was inspired to paint various screaming versions of Velázquez's great

pope, said that it was one of the greatest portraits that's ever been made.

On his return to Madrid two years later, Velázquez discovered that much had changed in the

royal household whilst he'd been away. For a start, he found out that the king had remarried

his own 14-year-old niece. Velázquez immediately found himself back in the thick of royal

duties. In fact, it was much to be done around the palaces.

Aside from the alcazard, there were four other great royal palaces around Madrid

that Philip IV used, the most spectacular of which was this one, L.S. Scoreal, built by his grandfather,

Philip II, as a mausoleum to the family, and in turn housing the body of his father,

the great Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, and it was in this kind of magisterian environment,

rather than an artist Garrett, that Velázquez's career developed.

Velázquez is close to the king, setting apart from other painters. There were a few

painters at court, but they had mundane tasks, including restoring pictures and mending frames,

and not so for Velázquez. In many ways, he broke the mold in the way that artists were seen in

the shift from being artisans to something more elevated. He was also given the job of restoring

and decorating numerous rooms here at the Escoreal, including the sacrosity, and this fantastic

chapter house. And on his trip to Italy, he came back with numerous treasures, by Titian,

very an A. Z. Tintareto and others, which he hung all over the palace.

From the moment that Velázquez arrived at court, and was made court painter, he began to accumulate

a number of different titles, and in 1652 he got his last and most illustrious. This time he was

made supreme martial to the court. After a lot of political wrangling, where various other candidates

were put forward, but Philip IV wanted Velázquez, so that was that. The job was mundane as

well as ceremonial, Velázquez was in charge of an army of servants to look after the king's

bed chamber to organise the linen to light the fires and so on. He was also responsible for

analysing transport to and from the palaces, and more creatively, he arranged festivities and

dances. But the job was important to Velázquez for two reasons. Firstly, it paid him a healthy

salary, and secondly, it put him right at the heart of power, where the kidos was in men's.

Velázquez's creative energy and talent showed no signs of waning towards the end of his life.

At the age of 57, he produced the most astounding, enigmatic and challenging painting

of his entire career. It's called Las Manina, so the maids of honour, but it's also known

as the family of Philip IV. And what we see is Velázquez himself, with his paintbrush in his hand,

standing before an easel, and then center stage is the infanter, the young daughter of the king

and the queen, surrounded on either side by her maids of honour. In the background there's a

shaperone and also a bodyguard, and to the right, and in the foreground of the picture,

a two dwarves, one of whom kicks rather playfully, perhaps cruelly, the dog that's lying

quietly there on the floor. Something has happened. Everyone, to a certain degree,

looks startled. The infantys eyes are just looking straight out.

A maid of honour still presenting water, but the dwarves, too, are staring out of us.

And the key to this is the background. There's a figure situated in an open doorway

who's the palace marshal, the man responsible for the running of the palace.

And he's looking, and then we look to the left, and this is a mirror.

Some people think it's actually a portrait of the king and the queen.

But look at the way Velázquez paints the light around it. It's a mirrored image.

Now, some people have also said that Velázquez is painting the king and the queen,

and that's a reflection of the painting, but the angles are all wrong.

This is a pictorial mystery, but it seems clear that someone, or something,

has just happened in the foreground where they're all looking out.

And the most likely explanation is that the king and the queen themselves

have just arrived. And this makes the picture a very cheeky clever royal portrait,

because it's unprecedented to show the painter and the royal subjects in the same image.

But Velázquez is doing that. And so this time-honoured quest for status

is finally realized in a picture where he's showing himself as a nobleman,

but he's showing himself sharing the same space as the royal family.

And that's enhanced by the fact that Velázquez isn't painting in a small studio.

He's taken over one of the grandramps of the palace with pictures on the walls after

artists like Rubens in which to paint his work.

And that's maniness is a summary of everything Velázquez has tried to achieve as an artist.

It's acutely observed almost scientifically so.

Figures come in and out of focus. The detail is wonderfully controlled,

the light is extraordinary, and there's a sense of a frozen moment captured.

Just like the Bodigons in Seville, it's as if that nanosecond,

when something has just happened, has been wonderfully captured and immortalized.

And instead of us just looking at what Velázquez has painted,

he casts us in a position as if we ourselves are being painted by Velázquez.

So he's turning ours inside out. He's mirroring and refracting.

And it's a fantastic picture because you can never quite grasp it. It changes its meaning,

it changes the way you look at it every time.

At the age of 61, the strain of his court responsibility is at taking its toll.

After a large ceremonial function, he suddenly became ill.

Velázquez died a couple of months later in the Alkazar, on the 6th of August 1660.

Velázquez ensured that artists were no longer perceived as mirror artists and in Spain,

but he also subtly showed that art could be so much more than religious or political propaganda.

At their best, his paintings were like mirrors through which men saw themselves and their

world, with perhaps more clarity than ever before.

If you want to find out more about the artist and work explored in this series,

there's an accompanying book called Great Artists, Available in All Good Book Shops.