Velázquez and Italy: Inquisition, Acquisition, Assimilation, and Amalgamation (original) (raw)

Velázquez and Italy: Inquisition, Acquisition, Assimilation, and Amalgamation

Todd Florio
Spring 2007
Painting in Spain: 1580-1700
Professor J. Brown
New York University -
Institute of Fine Arts

Velázquez and Italy: Inquisition, Acquisition, Assimilation, and Amalgamation

Velázquez’s first trip to Italy, in 1629, is frequently seen as an important turning point in his artistic career and his style of painting. The minimal information about Velázquez’s activities during the voyage, attained almost entirely from Francisco Pacheco’s Arte de la Pintura, combined with difficulties in the assignation of dates for Velázquez’s work completed during and around the time of the trip have left the door open for hypotheses about the journey’s influences. Influences which apparently brought about the dramatic changes witnessed in Velázquez’s post-Italy work. Going all the way back to Antonio Palomino’s delightful pastiche of Pacheco and apocrypha, historians have tried to piece together Velázquez’s particular influences.

To understand the metamorphosis that Velázquez went through during his year and a half in Italy, it is first necessary to look at Velázquez’s status before he left Madrid. One mustn’t forget that at 29 years of age, he was already an accomplished artist who had achieved the highest rank available to a painter at the Spanish court. In his early education he had been given a great deal of leeway and encouragement by his teacher and father-in-law, Francisco Pacheco. Pacheco’s position as an officer of the Inquisition, charged with regulating visual arts in Seville, suggests that he would have restricted the growth of his students. Quite to the contrary, Pacheco nurtured Velázquez’s thirst for experimentation and non-conformity, exempting him from the harsh criticism applied to other non-conformists in Arte.

As a result of this nurturing, Velázquez’s initial development leaves him a natural experimenter and subsequently an innovator-always adding new tools to his repertoire, but never leaving any of his good old tricks behind. An ever-growing tumbleweed of painterly talent, Velázquez’s ability grew virtually unchecked to the gargantuan proportions which allowed for such rich, psychologically complex and challenging masterpieces as The Spinners and Las Meninas.

Still in his formative years and painting rough-hewn figures around humble tables, Velázquez was purportedly criticized by some for not painting “more serious subjects.” When asked why he didn’t emulate the Italian master Rafael of Urbino, Palomino tells us

that Velázquez said he’d rather be “the first in that sort of coarseness than the second in delicacy.”

This apocryphal remark is illustrative of Velázquez’s caution to adopt anyone else’s style wholly. As a result of the pintor sabio Pacheco’s tutelage, Velázquez had the highest aspirations a painter could have-he aimed at nobility through his art. Throughout his career, Velázquez is much more likely to learn from the styles of others and assimilate rather than solely emulate. As Velázquez’s style develops he is adding in things that he’s learning, but never abandoning what he knows and is known for. This certainly proves true with regard to Velázquez’s Italian exposure.

It also proves true with regard to Velázquez’s interactions with Peter Paul Rubens who impressed Velázquez not just as a painter, but as one who had achieved the status Velázquez coveted-a noble status afforded him as an ambassador. Rubens’s influence on Velázquez is often cited to be two-fold (at least), in that he not only impressed the young Velázquez with his own mastery, but also seems to have reinforced the notion that one absolutely must go to Italy to complete his education as a painter.

Pacheco describes young Diego’s quick rise to fame and fortune at the Spanish court where he was to receive favor and preference from Philip IV. This favor and Velázquez’s place of privilege was made apparent for the foreign ambassadors at court by the way he was finally granted permission to travel to Italy.

Velázquez wasn’t simply sent off to Italy to fend for himself, Philip and the Count Duke of Olivares ensured that he would be well-protected and cared for by sending him with letters of recommendation from all the right people. It has been pointed out that the ambassador from Parma at court in Madrid, Flavio Atti, sent a missive warning that Velázquez mission to better learn his craft was spurious and that he was in fact a spy.

It seems likely that the ambassadors at the Spanish court had been knocked off balance by the presence of Rubens, whose status as an ambassador was seen as a threat or possibly even an insult to their status. It is significant that Atti sent off his coded warning two days before Velázquez had officially been granted permission to travel. The overeager nature of this tattling and premature communiqué might be seen as a particularly odoriferous piece of Parmesan resentment.

Many of those at court must have been jealous of the access which the young painter already received, though, as Atti points out, “his title, ‘Usher of the Chamber’ (Uscero di Camera) means little more than porter and signifies less than ‘Assistant to the Chamber’ (Agiutante di Camera) which is not his position nor is it to be.” For what reason other than jealousy would Atti go to the trouble of demeaning Velázquez’s official rank if he wanted to portray him as a potentially powerful threat? It is telling that this trifling comes immediately after the letter states that Velázquez, “paints in the King’s own apartment,” and goes on to note that, “the king often watches him paint.” It certainly seems that Atti wants to spoil any chance of Velázquez becoming an incidental diplomat.

All of this points to Velázquez’s status as an “untouchable” in the eyes of the King. This status is of crucial importance because it allows Velázquez the artistic freedom, even towards the beginning of his career, to experiment and avoid fitting into predetermined molds.

Debate arises as to the scope and mode of the influence of Velázquez’s direct exposure to the “Grand Manner” of history painting on his career. It is useful to start by noting the specific measurable changes in Velázquez’s paintings that occurred between the time he left Madrid and the time he returned. The most concrete change is the discarding of the weighty red-brown ground he used up until painting The Forge of Vulcan. Starting with this highly Italianate work, Velázquez began to use a lighter leadwhite ground which brightened his following works significantly. Velázquez’s technique also changed with an adoption of translucent stains made with highly diluted pigments used to create delicate shadows and contours. In addition, looser, freer brushwork especially in background landscapes came out of this time. And finally, Velázquez mastered an improved, more adequate spacing between figures in works depicting groups of people.

To cite Velázquez’s Italian excursion as the only source for these developments in Velázquez’s technique ignores the Artist’s more natural progression influenced by a convergence of factors. In Velázquez’s case, the influence of Rubens and his initial

master, Pacheco, are inseparable from the influences of Italian disegno and classical figure representation. Not to mention his need to rebel; to explore his own ideas. Velázquez’s Italian “graduate school” meshes organically with these other veins as the artist progresses and moves toward polyvalent mastery.

One of these successful technical experiments occurred as Velázquez used his time in the Villa Medici to try his hand at an entirely different type of subject-plein-air landscape. The two small canvasses that survive from this time are the obvious examples, but the lessons learned in doing the plein-air studies are then applied in many other paintings such as Saint Anthony Abbot Visits Saint Paul the Hermit, and also the royal equestrian portraits and especially The Surrender of Breda in which Diego paints his amicable acquaintance, the general Ambrose Spinola, who had protected him as they traveled through Italy in tumultuous times. The little daubs of color that form trees or snow on mountains in these later works are a far cry from the overwrought grape leaves and blocky bluffs in the background of “Los Borrachos.”

The final picture that survives which is thought to be from this first Italian trip is a portrait of Mary of Hungary. Though it has been suggested that this painting appears to conform to Velázquez’s earlier technique, and might have been done before Velázquez’s departure, if the painting was indeed created in Naples towards the end of the Italian trip, it is not surprising that Velázquez would not yet know how to adapt his lessons newly learned to formal court portraiture. It would take years for these lessons to gestate and manifest themselves in the confident amalgam of techniques evident in Philip IV in Brown and Silver and so many others.

At this point, we are left with the question of what new tricks Velázquez was bringing back from Italy. It is without a doubt that Velázquez’s Italian excursions shaped the way he painted. With minimal documentation and little but speculation as to what artists Velázquez might have interacted with, it is often futile to try to ascertain any direct lines of influence from specific sources.

Rather than myopically focusing on the four (possibly five) works created in Italy, it is more enlightening to examine the development of Velázquez’s work in the time immediately after his return. In portraiture, Velázquez seems to blend what he has learned from both Italy and Rubens. He seems to break from the rigidity of Flemish proto-photo-realism of Sanchez Coello and Mor. One great example is Philip IV in Brown and Silver in which the decorative embroidery on his clothes are painted with loose criss-crossing brushwork. This confidence and economy of paint application becomes Velázquez’s most notable innovation and a hallmark of his style.

With careful looking, there is direct evidence of change in many of the post-Italy works themselves. It has been suggested that Velázquez could finally understand Titian in context of his Venetian roots. Whereas Velázquez had used shadow with limited success to tone down the background figure in The Water Seller, he now is able to turn down the intensity of the background figure in The Forge of Vulcan without leaving only a sketchy ghost of a man.

Palomino restates Pacheco’s assertion that Velázquez spent his days at the Vatican drawing. It has often been stated that Velázquez wasn’t in the habit of drawing his subjects out extensively before rendering them in paint. Though he drew excessively in Italy, it seems that Velázquez continued to work problems with composition and figural positioning on the canvas directly. What does seem different is that after Italy, he has learned how to space his figures out and avoid the claustrophobia inducing bunching of “Los Borachos.” This is readily evident in Joseph’s Tunic and Forge of Vulcan, but continues with The Surrender of Breda, in which a figure-filled composition still has breathing room because the figures are set at varying depths and engaged in divergent activities.

We know that certain technical changes in Velázquez’s approach altered the visual impact of his paintings and added to his repertoire as he took on greater challenges and shattered the purported comments that he was only “a painter of heads.” Indeed two of Velázquez’s most beloved works resulted from a greater understanding of how to portray the human body out of clothes (at least partially). The famous Rokeby Venus is most often seen as only being possible as a result of the example of Rubens’s transparent hues, but the layering of thinned out paints that create the illusion of softness in the flesh of the

supine goddess were effectively used by Velázquez in his Italianate Forge of Vulcan. Though he has strayed from the Grand Manner, there are still the lessons learned in Italy merged with the confident looser brushwork characteristic of his later career.

Velázquez’s Mars has provoked new thought about this adulterous god. Is Velázquez eating his brazen words about painting only course people and avoiding the more “important” subjects? Indeed he is not. He has taken history painting on in his own way. Only by understanding and assimilating the “Grand Manner” is Velázquez free to reinterpret these stories and bring them closer to the human heart. We can picture this post-coital Mars sitting on the edge of the bed he shared with Venus (perhaps the very same bed of Venus at her Toilet) and see his expression as ultimately dissatisfied. Though Ovid states that upon catching the adulterous lovers, “one of the gods, undismayed, prayed that he might be shamed like that,” Velázquez’s Mars seems nonplussed by the Pyrrhic victory of his spoilt love affair-perhaps not by the shame of his exposure to ridicule, but by the hollowness of lust fulfilled without greater substance. These two works combined, (though never meant to be a pair), form a thought-provoking denouement to the exhilarating story started by The Forge of Vulcan.

With the atypical examples of the Rokeby Venus and Mars we are left to wonder whether Velazquez is intentionally exercising a sort of anti-Italian. Arguably, Velázquez has assimilated the Italian lessons so completely as to be able to deliberately subvert them with powerful illusionist effect. Though he has proven with Joseph’s Coat Brought to Jacob that he fully understands the geometric technique of Italian disegno, he demonstrates with Pablo de Valladolid that reality and illusionistic presence can be created without the tricks of the Italian masters. Velázquez spites the use of a single vanishing point and geometry, and refuses to define even the line where the wall and floor meet. It is worth noting that the use of a curved sheet of marbled paper is the standard backdrop for professional portrait photography. This technique is also often used for the photography of large objects in museum catalogs. The effect of which is to totally focus the viewer’s attention on the subject itself.

… In order to enjoy Titian’s portrait of Charles the Fifth on horseback we must forget that this is Charles the Fifth in person and see instead a portrait-that is, an image, a fiction. " Jose Ortega y Gasset, in “The Dehumanization of Art”

As we have seen from Pacheco’s descriptions of the effects of Juan de Pareja, the fact that the painting was so lifelike was what made it so highly valued. Even recently we have our equivalent reactions. Former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas Hoving writes of Juan de Pareja in 1975, “My God, what a painting… The young Black seemed on the point of speaking to us.” Velázquez first trip to Italy was a major acceleration in his rapid assimilation of technique after technique to develop his brilliantly convincing naturalistic style. Perhaps his aptitude took him too far for his own liking.

What Velázquez may not have counted on was that upon reaching a level where his paintings mimicked life so effectively, he was left with few potential experiments. It might be said that he had gone so far as to erase “the artist” by making the viewer forget that he is looking at a painting and causing him to focus on the psychology of the subject. Perhaps it was Velázquez’s sense of this that brought about a final burst of creative invention which challenged the viewer with his greatest masterwork Las Meninas by constantly and inescapably reminding him that the painter is always in the painting.

Selected Bibliography

Brown, Jonathan. Velázquez, Painter and Courtier. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.

Brown, Jonathan, and Carmen Garrido. Velázquez: The Technique of Genius. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.

Brown, Jonathan, and John Huxtable Elliott. A Palace for a King: The Buen Retiro and the Court of Philip IV. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

Enggass, Robert, and Jonathan Brown. Italy and Spain, 1600-1750; Sources and Documents. Sources and documents in the history of art series. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970.

Goldberg, Edward. “Velázquez in Italy: Painters, Spies, and Low Spaniards” in Art Bulletin, Vol. 74, No. 3. (Sept. 1992), pp. 453-456

Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.), Thomas Hoving, and Dietrich Von Bothmer. 1975. The chase, the capture: collecting at the Metropolitan. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Ortega y Gasset, José. The Dehumanization of Art: And Other Essays on Art, Culture, and Literature. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968.

Ovid, and William Scovil Anderson. Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.

Palomino de Castro y Velasco, Antonio. Lives of the Eminent Spanish Painters and Sculptors. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Just for fun…