Diego Velázquez

Diego Velázquez (1599–1660) was born in Seville, trained under Francisco Pacheco — whose daughter he married — and spent the greater part of his career in Madrid as painter to Philip IV. He travelled twice to Italy, working in Venice and Rome. He is among the small number of painters whose technical achievement altered what came afterwards. Working with a loaded brush and remarkable economy, he could suggest silk, air and skin with marks that dissolve into abstraction at close range and resolve completely at a distance. Las Meninas, painted for the royal apartments, remains one of the most analysed pictures in Western art. Manet called him the painter of painters, and the nineteenth century's rediscovery of him shaped Impressionism. Four works here, including Christ Crucified, the Adoration of the Magi, and Christ contemplated by the Christian Soul — the religious paintings rather than the court portraits he is better known for.