Original subtitles

Ask many of the great painters of the last two centuries who's the greatest portrait painter of them all 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' discovery of the Americas just over 100 years earlier.

His middle class parents had tenuous aristocratic connections so it was considered unusual for someone 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 meant he could attempt to rise above the status of a provincial artisan.

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's 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 everyday scene of a man selling water to two other men.

Now, there's a guy here in the foreground who 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 a bodegone, 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 unidealised, 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 graphic sense of realism is utterly unprecedented in the art of Seville.

His teacher, Pacheco, was well connected, and this proved vital for Velázquez's future success, bringing him to attention of the Count Duke Olivares, a patron of the arts and a very powerful chief minister to the young king, Philip IV.

Olivares showed an interest in the precocious talents of the young Velázquez and knew of his ambition to become a court painter.

So, in 1623, when one of the six court painters died, leaving a vacancy, Olivares 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, aloof and without expression.

The king is wearing a sombre outfit, which suited Velázquez's own style at the time, which was dominated by a sober palette of browns, blacks, greys and whites.

But as well as capturing the king's distinctive image, with his pronounced Habsburg jaw, the picture fulfils 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 defender 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 Olivares intended.

They were images of kingship as much as of 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 had inherited a vast collection of priceless art from his grandfather, Philip II, including an unrivalled collection of Titian's works.

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

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

sandwiched between the apartments of Olivares and the king.

The preferential treatment that Velázquez was receiving at court started to generate a good deal of jealousy around the place,

particularly from other painters, who spread the rumour that Velázquez could only do heads.

The king wryly 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 Alcazar Palace that showed Philip III,

Philip IV's father, expelling the Moors from Spain.

There were three other court painters involved,

and the two judges were well-versed in recent developments in arts

and favoured 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 duly proclaimed victorious,

and from then on in, his position as court painter was virtually unassailable.

MUSIC PLAYS

I think Velázquez gets the job, next.

Oh, yes.

LAUGHTER

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.

Undoubtedly 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 splendours of Renaissance and classical art and architecture.

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

The Forge of Vulcan, produced in Rome in 1630.

It's a mythological scene.

Apollo appears before Vulcan to warn him of his wife's infidelity with Mars,

the god of war.

In a wonderfully frozen moment, the workers stop dead in their tracks

as they listen with disbelief to the revelation.

It's here that we can see the creative genius of Velázquez.

The bodies are pure classical creations,

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

But the faces and the expressions show Velázquez's 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

and embarked on the most productive period of his career.

The Count Duke Olivares had just presented the Spanish monarchy

with another palace in tribute to them, the Buen Retiro.

And that palace needed decorating, and Velázquez was heavily involved.

In the new, vast hall of realms, twelve battle scenes were commissioned,

the most powerful of which was this one by Velázquez.

It shows the surrender of Breda, 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 skews events to make a moral and political point.

At the centre of the painting are the two commanders.

On the right-hand side is the Spanish general, Spinola.

On the left-hand side, the celebrated Dutch commander, Justin of Nassau.

Now, it never actually happened that Justin 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 his 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 chivalric 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 empathising once again with the 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,

clad in a rather elegant grey-green jacket and hat,

topped with a little white feather,

is a self-portrait of Velázquez himself,

looking out at 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 royal family

form the chief part of Velázquez's work.

But he also painted portraits of the hombre de placer,

the dwarfs and buffoons of the court.

These entertainers amused the king with magic tricks,

jokes and general tomfoolery.

Some were disabled, like the jester Calabathas,

who Velázquez painted with great empathy.

And in his portrait of Sebastien de Mora,

he portrays someone of considerable intelligence.

There's dignity, even defiance in his pose,

and an 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 Count de Colivarez 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 Philip 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 Rome led to some staggering achievements,

notably in the field of portraiture,

beginning with this work.

It's a portrait of Juan de Pareja,

who was Velázquez's assistant.

In fact, 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, rumour has it,

slipped his own pictures into Velázquez's studio one time,

and when the king, Philip IV of Spain, saw the work,

said that this could never be the work of a slave,

and so, according to rumour,

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 ennobling picture.

He's almost a latter-day Othello.

This is a man of Moorish 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, though, 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,

manages to produce what is, in effect,

a symphony of mute colours.

He brings them absolutely to life.

The background is done with brush strokes

that you can barely see,

but as you get closer to the head,

you can see them much more markedly.

There's this layering or washing of different colours.

And look here at the sleeve.

Now, this is velvet.

When you get close up,

what you see are these slightly scumbled brush strokes

of grey over the top of this dark, browny-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 Velazquez's biographer, Palomino,

that most of the work in the exhibition was just art.

But this, 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 Velazquez,

and that the real big work was just round the corner.

This is Pope Innocent X,

one of the most powerful men in Christendom.

Velazquez'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.

Velazquez 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 papal skin

and shows a mere man, impatient and slightly irritable.

A reminder that Velazquez would have been granted very little time

in which to capture a physical likeness.

His use of colour is remarkable, as is his depiction of texture,

as in the portrait of Juan de Pareja,

which he creates with a very limited palette.

With only tones 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 Velazquez's most celebrated works.

Francis Bacon, one of the great painters of the 20th century,

who was inspired to paint various screaming versions of Velazquez'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,

Velazquez 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.

And Velazquez immediately found himself back in the thick of royal duties.

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

Aside from the Alcazar, there were four other great royal palaces around Madrid that Philip IV used,

the most spectacular of which was this one, El Escorial,

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 magisterial environment, rather than in an artist's garret,

that Velazquez's career developed.

Velazquez's closeness to the king set him 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 Velazquez.

In many ways, he broke the mould in the way that artists were seen in Spain,

the shift from being artisans to something more elevated.

He was also given the job of restoring and decorating numerous rooms here at the Escorial,

including the sacristy and this fantastic chapter house.

And on his trip to Italy, he came back with numerous treasures,

by Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto and others, which he hung all over the palace.

From the moment that Velazquez 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 marshal to the court,

after a lot of political wrangling, where various other candidates were put forward.

But Philip IV wanted Velazquez, so that was that.

The job was mundane as well as ceremonial.

Velazquez was in charge of an army of servants to look after the king's bedchamber,

to organise the linen, to light the fires and so on.

He was also responsible for organising transport to and from the palaces.

And more creatively, he arranged festivities and dances.

But the job was important to Velazquez for two reasons.

Firstly, it paid him a healthy salary.

And secondly, it put him right at the heart of power, where the kudos was immense.

Velazquez'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 Meninas, or the Maids of Honour, but it's also known as the family of Philip IV.

And what we see is Velazquez himself, with his paintbrush in his hand, standing before an easel.

And then centre stage is the Infanta, the young daughter of the king and the queen,

surrounded on either side by her Maids of Honour.

In the background, there's a chaperone and also a bodyguard.

And to the right, in the foreground of the picture, are two dwarfs,

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 Infanta's eyes are just looking straight out.

Her Maid of Honour still presenting water, but the dwarfs, too, are staring out at us.

And the key to this is the background.

There's a figure silhouetted 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 Velazquez paints the light around it.

It's a mirrored image.

Now, some people have also said that Velazquez 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 Velazquez is doing that.

And so this time-honoured quest for status is finally realised 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 Velazquez isn't painting in a small studio.

He's taken over one of the grand rooms of the palace with pictures on the walls after artists like Rubens in which to paint his work.

And Las Meninas is a summary of everything Velazquez 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 Bodegons in Seville, it's as if that nanosecond, when something has just happened, has been wonderfully captured and immortalised.

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

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

So he's turning art 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 responsibilities had taken its toll.

After a large ceremonial function, he suddenly became ill.

Velazquez died a couple of months later, in the Alcazar, on the 6th of August, 1660.

Velazquez ensured that artists were no longer perceived as mere artisans 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 artists and work explored in this series,

there's an accompanying book called Great Artists, available in all good bookshops.

Enem

Yeah

Let's see