Vel�zquez or Vel�squez, Diego de Silva y 1599-1660
Spanish painter who is among the greatest of the 17th century

Vel�zquez was born in Seville. In 1613 he became the pupil of the painter and art historian Francisco Pacheco, whose daughter he married in 1618 and who, in his Art of Painting (1639), provides an account of the young Vel�zquez.

In 1618 Vel�zquez set up his own studio. His early works were bodeg�nes, characteristically Spanish domestic genre pieces, of which Old Woman Cooking Eggs (1618, National Galleries of Scotland) is a typical example. In 1622 he tried his luck at court in Madrid and persuaded the poet Luis de G�ngora y Argote to sit for him. The following year he achieved lifelong court patronage with his equestrian portrait (now lost) of Philip IV, who then had all other portraits of himself withdrawn. The other court artists accused Vel�zquez of being incapable of painting anything but heads. The king accordingly ordered a competition on a historical subject, which Vel�zquez won with his Expulsion of the Moriscos by Philip III (now also lost).

In 1628 Rubens visited Madrid and befriended him. His advice and the palace collection of Italian art encouraged Vel�squez's visit to Italy (1629-31). His sombre, austere, naturalistic style was transformed into the lightly modelled, more colourful styles of Titian and Tintoretto, as is apparent in his Forge of Vulcan (c.1630) and Joseph's Coat (1630) and in the new type of portrait which Vel�zquez improvised, of the king (c.1634) or his brother, or son, in hunting costume with dog and landscape. One of the most striking of his many portraits of his royal master is full length (c.1632, National Gallery, London).

The only surviving historical painting is his Baroque Surrender of Breda (c.1634). There are also many portraits of the royal children, particularly Infante Baltasar Carlos on Horseback (1635-36), the Infanta Margarita (1653-54, 1656, 1659) and the Infanta Maria Theresa (1652-53), and of the court dwarfs (1644,1655) and jester, nicknamed Don Juan de Austria (1652-59). In 1650 he was again in Rome to obtain art treasures for the king and there painted the portrait of Pope Innocent X and the two impressionistic Views from Villa Medici.

On his return he captured the pathetic facial expression of the new queen, the young Maria Anne of Austria, in his best feminine full-length portrait (1652). But he is best remembered for his three late masterpieces, Las Meni�as (1656, 'Maids of Honour'), in which the Infanta Margarita, her dwarf and attendants and the artist himself with easel are grouped around a canvas in a large palace room, hung with paintings, Las Hilanderas (c.1657, 'The Tapestry Weavers'), and the famous Venus and Cupid, known as the 'Rokeby Venus' (c.1658), one of the few nudes in Spanish painting. Vel�zquez was apppointed usher to the king's chamber (1627), superintendent of works (1643), palace chamberlain (1652) and was made a knight of the Order of Santiago (1658), the highest court award.

His painting is distinguished for its unflattering realism, in which nothing is imaginatively embellished or otherwise falsified, a remarkable achievement for a court painter. Goya carried on his tradition a century later and James McNeill Whistler, �douard Manet and the French Impressionists acknowledged his influence.

Bibliography: Xavier De Salas, Vel�zquez (1974); D Brown, The World of Vel�zquez (1969); Jos� Lopez-Rey, Vel�zquez' Work and World (1968).