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Diego Velázquez

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Artists

   Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez ( June 6, 1599 – August 6, 1660),
   commonly referred to as Diego Velázquez, was a Spanish painter, the
   leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an
   individualistic artist of the contemporary baroque period, important as
   a portrait artist. His two visits to Italy while part of the Spanish
   court are well documented. In addition to numerous renditions of scenes
   of historical and cultural significance, he created scores of portraits
   of the Spanish royal family, other notable European figures, and
   commoners, culminating in the production of his masterpiece, Las
   Meninas (1656).

   From the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Velázquez's artwork
   was a model for the realist and impressionist painters, in particular
   Édouard Manet. Since that time, more modern artists, including Spain's
   Pablo Picasso, Francisco Goya and Salvador Dalí, have paid tribute to
   Velázquez by recreating several of his most famous works.

Early life

   Velázquez, born in Seville, Andalusia early in June 1599, and baptized
   on June 6, was the son of Juan Rodríguez de Silva, a lawyer of noble
   Portuguese descent, and Jerónima Velázquez, a member of Seville's
   hidalgo class, an order of minor aristocracy (it was a Spanish custom,
   in order to maintain a legacy of maternal inheritance, for the eldest
   male to adopt the name of his mother). He was educated by his parents
   to fear God and, intended for a learned profession, received good
   training in languages and philosophy. But he showed an early gift for
   art; consequently, he began to study under Francisco de Herrera, a
   vigorous painter who disregarded the Italian influence of the early
   Seville school. Velázquez remained with him for one year. It was
   probably from Herrera that he learned to use brushes with long
   bristles.

   After leaving Herrera's studio when he was 11 years old, Velázquez
   began to serve as an apprentice under the pedantic Francisco Pacheco, a
   founded artist and teacher in Seville. Though considered a generally
   dull, commonplace painter, at times Pacheco would express a simple,
   direct realism that is in contradiction to the style of Raphael that he
   was taught. Velázquez remained in Pacheco's school for five years,
   studying proportion and perspective and witnessing the trends in the
   literary and artistic circles of Seville.

To Madrid (early period)

   Vieja friendo huevos (1618, English: An Old Woman Frying Eggs)
   Enlarge
   Vieja friendo huevos (1618, English: An Old Woman Frying Eggs)

The birth of realism in Seville

   Velázquez fell in love with Pacheco's daughter Juana, whom he married
   in 1618 with Pacheco's hearty approval. The young painter set himself
   to begin recreating in his art common things—earthenware jars of the
   country people, birds, fish, fruit and flowers of the marketplace.
   These early paintings were called bodegones from bodegon, a cheap
   eating house, and depict common everyday low-life street scenes in a
   sombre manner with the humble characters portrayed with great dignity
   and gravitas. Notable examples of these bodegones are Vieja friendo
   huevos (1618, English: An Old Woman Frying Eggs) and perhaps his finest
   painting from this early period The Water-seller of Seville (c1620).

   By the early 1620s his position and reputation were assured in Seville;
   Velázquez's wife in these years bore him two daughters—his only known
   family. The younger, Ignacia, died in infancy, while the elder,
   Francisca, in due time married Bautista del Mazo, a painter.

   Velázquez produced other notable works in this time. Sacred subjects
   are depicted in Adoración de los Reyes (1619, English: The Adoration of
   the Magi), and Jesús y los peregrinos de Emaús (1626, English: Christ
   and the Pilgrims of Emmaus), both of which begin to express his more
   pointed and careful realism.

Madrid and Philip IV

   Velázquez went to Madrid in the second half of April 1622, with letters
   of introduction to Don Juan de Fonseca, himself from Seville, who was
   chaplain to the King. At the request of Pacheco, Velázquez painted the
   portrait of the famous poet Luis de Góngora y Argote. Velázquez painted
   Góngora crowned with a laurel wreath, but at some unknown later date
   painted over it. It is possible that Velázquez stopped in Toledo on his
   way from Seville, on the advice of Pacheco, or back from Madrid on that
   of Góngora, a great admirer of El Greco, having composed a poem on the
   occasion of his death.

   In December 1622, Rodrigo de Villandrando, the King's favorite court
   painter, died. Don Juan de Fonseca conveyed to Velázquez the command to
   come to the Court from the Count-Duke of Olivares, the powerful
   minister of Philip IV. He was offered 50 ducats (175 g of gold—worth
   about €2000 in 2005) to defray his expenses, and he was accompanied by
   his father-in-law. Fonseca lodged the young painter at his own home and
   sat for a portrait himself, which, when completed, was conveyed to the
   Royal palace. A portrait of the King was commissioned. On August 16,
   1623, the King sat for Velázquez. Complete in one day the portrait was
   likely to have been no more than a head sketch, but both the King and
   Olivares were pleased. Olivares commanded Velázquez to move his home to
   Madrid, promising that no other painter would ever paint the King's
   portrait and all other portraits of the King would be withdrawn from
   circulation. In the following year, 1624, he received 300 ducats from
   the king to pay the cost of moving his family to Madrid, which became
   his home for the remainder of his life.

   Through an equestrian portrait of the king, painted in 1623, Velázquez
   secured admission to the royal service with a salary of 20 ducats per
   month, besides medical attendance, lodgings and payment for the
   pictures he might paint. The portrait was exhibited on the steps of San
   Felipe and was received with enthusiasm. It is now lost. The Museo del
   Prado, however, has two of Velázquez's portraits of the king (nos. 1070
   and 1071) in which the severity of the Seville period has disappeared
   and the tones are more delicate. The modeling is firm, recalling that
   of Antonio Mor, the Dutch portrait painter of Philip II, who exercised
   a considerable influence on the Spanish school. In the same year the
   Prince of Wales (afterwards Charles I) arrived at the court of Spain.
   Records indicate that he sat for Velázquez, but the picture is now
   lost.
   Los borrachos (1629, English: The Feast of Bacchus)
   Enlarge
   Los borrachos (1629, English: The Feast of Bacchus)
   A 1628 portrait of Philip IV
   Enlarge
   A 1628 portrait of Philip IV

   In September 1628 Peter Paul Rubens came to Madrid as an emissary from
   the Infanta Isabella, and Velázquez kept his company among the Titians
   at the Escorial. Rubens was then at the height of his powers. The seven
   months of the diplomatic mission showed Rubens' brilliance as painter
   and courtier. Rubens had a high opinion of Velázquez, but he effected
   no great change in his painting. He reinforced Velázquez's desire to
   see Italy and the works of the great Italian masters.

   In 1627, Philip set a competition for the best painters of Spain the
   subject of the expulsion of the Moors. Velázquez won. His picture was
   destroyed in a fire at the palace in 1734. Recorded descriptions of it
   say that it depicted Philip III pointing with his baton to a crowd of
   men and women driven off under charge of soldiers, while the female
   personification of Spain sits in calm repose. Velázquez was appointed
   gentleman usher as reward. Later he also received a daily allowance of
   12 réis, the same amount allotted to the court barbers, and 90 ducats a
   year for dress. Five years after he painted it, as an extra payment he
   received 100 ducats for the picture of Bacchus (The Feast of Bacchus),
   painted in 1629. The spirit and aim of this work are better understood
   from its Spanish name, Los borrachos or Los bebedores (the tipplers),
   who are paying mock homage to a half-naked ivy-crowned young man seated
   on a wine barrel. The painting is firm and solid, and the light and
   shade are more deftly handled than in former works. Altogether, this
   production may be taken as the most advanced example of the first style
   of Velázquez.

Velázquez's Italian period

   It is canonical to divide the artistic career of Velázquez by his two
   visits to Italy, with his second grouping of works following the first
   visit and his third grouping following the second visit. This somewhat
   arbitrary division may be accepted though it will not always apply,
   because, as is usual in the case of many painters, his styles at times
   overlap each other. Velázquez rarely signed his pictures, and the royal
   archives give the dates of only his most important works. Internal
   evidence and history pertaining to his portraits supply the rest to a
   certain extent.

First visit to Italy

   In 1629 Philip gave Velázquez permission to carry out his desire of
   visiting Italy, without loss of salary, making him a present of 400
   ducats to which Olivares added 200. He sailed from Barcelona in August
   in the company of the Marqués de Spinola, the conqueror of Breda, then
   on his way to take command of the Spanish troops at Milan. It was
   during this voyage that Velázquez must have heard the details of the
   surrender of Breda from the lips of the victor, and he must have
   sketched his fine head, known to us also by the portrait by Van Dyck.
   La fragua de Vulcano (1630, English: The Forge of Vulcan)
   Enlarge
   La fragua de Vulcano (1630, English: The Forge of Vulcan)

   In Venice, Velázquez made copies of Tintoretto's Crucifixion and Last
   Supper which he sent to the king, and in Rome he copied Michelangelo
   and Raphael, lodging in the Villa Medici till fever compelled him to
   retire into the city. Here he painted the La fragua de Vulcano (1630,
   The Forge of Vulcan; no. 1171 of the Museo del Prado), in which Apollo
   narrates to the astonished Vulcan, the blacksmith of the gods portrayed
   here as a village blacksmith, the news of the infidelity of Venus,
   while four others listen to the scandal. The mythological treatment is
   similar to that of The Drunks: it is intimately realistic and innately
   Spanish, giving a picture of the interior of a smithy of Andalusia,
   with Apollo inserted to make the story tell. The conception is
   commonplace, yet the impression it produces is from the vividness of
   the representation and the power of expression. The modeling of the
   half-naked figures is extremely detailed. Altogether, this picture is
   much superior to his other work painted at the same time, La túnica de
   José (1630, English: Joseph's Bloody Coat), which now hangs in the
   Escorial. Both of these works are evidently painted from the same
   models. Curiously absent from both of these works, however, is the
   influence of the Italians. In Rome, Velázquez also painted two
   beautiful landscapes of the gardens of the Villa Medici. Landscape was
   uncommon in Spanish art, but Velázquez showed how capable he was in
   this branch as well. The silvery views of Aranjuez, which at one time
   passed under his name, are now considered the work of his pupil and
   son-in-law Mazo. After a visit to Naples in 1631, where he worked with
   his countryman José Ribera and painted a charming portrait of the
   Infanta Maria, sister of Philip, Velázquez returned early in the year
   to Madrid.

Return to Madrid (middle period)

   Velázquez then painted the first of many portraits of the young prince
   and heir to the Spanish throne, Don Baltasar Carlos, looking dignified
   and lordly even in his childhood, in the dress of a field marshal on
   his prancing steed. The scene is in the riding school of the palace,
   the king and queen looking on from a balcony, while Olivares attends as
   master of the horse to the prince. Don Baltasar died in 1646 at the age
   of seventeen, so, judging by his age in the portrait, it must have been
   painted in about 1641.
   La rendición de Breda (1634-1635, English: The Surrender of Breda) was
   inspired by Velázquez's first visit to Italy, in which he accompanied
   Ambrosio Spínola, who conquered the Dutch city of Breda a few years
   prior. This masterwork depicts a transfer of the key to the city from
   the Dutch to the Spanish army during the Siege of Breda.
   Enlarge
   La rendición de Breda (1634-1635, English: The Surrender of Breda) was
   inspired by Velázquez's first visit to Italy, in which he accompanied
   Ambrosio Spínola, who conquered the Dutch city of Breda a few years
   prior. This masterwork depicts a transfer of the key to the city from
   the Dutch to the Spanish army during the Siege of Breda.

   The powerful minister Olivares was the early and constant patron of the
   painter. His impassive, saturnine face is familiar to us from the many
   portraits painted by Velázquez. Two are notable; one is a full-length,
   stately and dignified, in which he wears the green cross of Alcantara
   and holds a wand, the badge of his office as master of the horse, the
   other, a great equestrian portrait in which he is flatteringly
   represented as a field marshal during action. In these portraits,
   Velázquez has well repaid the debt of gratitude that he owed to his
   first patron, whom Velázquez stood by during Olivares's fall from
   power, thus exposing himself to the great risk of the anger of the
   jealous Philip. The king, however, showed no sign of malice towards his
   favorite painter.

   The sculptor Montafles modeled a statue of one of Velázquez's
   equestrian portraits of the king, painted in 1636, which was cast in
   bronze by the Florentine sculptor Tacca and which now stands in the
   Plaza del Oriente at Madrid. The original of this portrait no longer
   exists, but several others do. Velázquez, in this and in all his
   portraits of the king, depicts Philip wearing the golilla, a stiff
   linen collar projecting at right angles from the neck. It was invented
   by the king, who was so proud of it that he celebrated it by a festival
   followed by a procession to the church to thank God for the blessing.
   Thus, the golilla was the height of fashion, and appeared in most of
   the male portraits of the period.

   Velázquez was in constant and close attendance on Philip, accompanying
   him in his journeys to Aragon in 1642 and 1644, and was doubtless
   present with him when he entered Lerida as a conqueror. It was then
   that he painted a great equestrian portrait in which the king is
   represented as a great commander leading his troops—a role which Philip
   never played except in pageantry. All is full of animation except the
   stolid face of the king. It hangs as a pendant to the great Olivares
   portrait—fit rivals of the neighboring Charles V by Titian, which
   inspired Velázquez to excel himself, and both remarkable for their
   silvery tone and their feeling of open air.
   Juan de Pareja (1650)
   Enlarge
   Juan de Pareja (1650)

Velázquez's portraiture

   Besides the forty portraits of Philip by Velázquez, he painted
   portraits of other members of the royal family: Philip's first wife,
   Isabella of Bourbon, and her children, especially her eldest son, Don
   Baltasar Carlos, of whom there is a beautiful full-length in a private
   room at Buckingham Palace. Cavaliers, soldiers, churchmen and poets of
   the court, as, for example, the Quevedo at Apsley House, sat to the
   painter and, even if forgotten by history, will live on his canvas.

   The Spaniards have always been cautious to commit to canvas the
   portraits of their beautiful women. Queens and infants may be painted
   and exhibited, but ladies rarely. One wonders who the beautiful woman
   can be who adorns the Wallace collection, a brunette so unlike the
   usual fair-haired female sitters to Velázquez. This picture is one of
   the ornaments of the Wallace collection. However, if few ladies of the
   court of Philip have been depicted, Velázquez painted several of his
   buffoons and dwarfs. Velázquez appears to represent them with respect
   and sympathetically, as in El Primo (1644, English: The Favorite),
   whose intelligent face and huge folio with ink-bottle and pen by his
   side show him to be a wiser and better-educated man than many of the
   gallants of the court. Pablo de Valladolid (1635, English: Paul of
   Valladolid), a buffoon evidently acting a part, and El Bobo de Coria
   (1639, English: The Buffoon of Coria) belong to this middle period.

   The greatest of the religious paintings by Velázquez also belongs to
   this middle period, the Cristo Crucificado (1632, English: Christ on
   the Cross). It is a work of tremendous originality, depicting Christ
   immediately after death. The Savior's head hangs on his breast and a
   mass of dark tangled hair conceals part of the face. The figure stands
   alone. The picture was lengthened to suit its place in an oratory, but
   this addition has since been removed.

   Velázquez's son-in-law Juan Bautista Martinez del Mazo had succeeded
   him as usher in 1634, and Mazo himself had received a steady promotion
   in the royal household. Mazo received a pension of 500 ducats in 1640,
   increased to 700 in 1648, for portraits painted and to be painted, and
   was appointed inspector of works in the palace in 1647.
   1650 portrait of Pope Innocent X
   Enlarge
   1650 portrait of Pope Innocent X

   Philip now entrusted Velázquez with carrying out a design on which he
   had long set his heart: the founding of an academy of art in Spain.
   Rich in pictures, Spain was weak in statuary, and Velázquez was
   commissioned once again to proceed to Italy to make purchases.

Second Visit to Italy

   Accompanied by his manservant Pareja, whom he trained in painting,
   Velázquez sailed from Málaga in 1649, landing at Genoa, and proceeded
   from Milan to Venice, buying paintings of Titian, Tintoretto and
   Veronese as he went. At Modena he was received with much favour by the
   duke, and here he painted the portrait of the duke at the Modena
   gallery and two portraits that now adorn the Dresden gallery, for these
   paintings came from the Modena sale of 1746.

   Those works presage the advent of the painter's third and latest
   manner, a noble example of which is the great portrait of Pope Innocent
   X in the Doria Pamphilj Gallery in Rome, where Velázquez now proceeded.
   There he was received with marked favour by the Pope, who presented him
   with a medal and golden chain. Velázquez took a copy of the
   portrait—which Sir Joshua Reynolds thought was the finest picture in
   Rome—with him to Spain. Several copies of it exist in different
   galleries, some of them possibly studies for the original or replicas
   painted for Philip. Velázquez, in this work, had now reached the manera
   abreviada, a term coined by contemporary Spaniards for this bolder,
   sharper style. The portrait shows such ruthlessness in Innocent's
   expression that some in the Vatican feared that Velázquez would meet
   with the Pope's displeasure, but Innocent was well pleased with the
   work, hanging it in his official visitor's waiting room.

   In 1650 in Rome Velázquez also painted a portrait of his servant, Juan
   de Pareja, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. This
   portrait procured his election into the Academy of St. Luke.
   Purportedly Velázquez created this portrait as a warm-up of his skills
   before his portrait of the Pope. It captures in great detail Pareja's
   countenance and his somewhat worn and patched clothing with an
   impressive economy of brushwork; it is one of his best known pieces of
   portraiture.

Return to Spain (later period)

   King Philip wished that Velázquez return to Spain; accordingly, after a
   visit to Naples, where he saw his old friend José Ribera, he returned
   to Spain via Barcelona in 1651, taking with him many pictures and 300
   pieces of statuary, which afterwards were arranged and cataloged for
   the king. Undraped sculpture was, however, abhorrent to the Spanish
   Church, and after Philip's death these works gradually disappeared.
   Isabella of Bourbon had died in 1644, and the king had married
   Marie-Anne of Austria, whom Velázquez now painted in many attitudes. He
   was specially chosen by the king to fill the high office of aposentador
   major, which imposed on him the duty of looking after the quarters
   occupied by the court—a responsible function which was no sinecure and
   one which interfered with the exercise of his art. Yet far from
   indicating any decline, his works of this period are amongst the
   highest examples of his style.

Las Meninas

   Las Meninas, painted in 1656
   Enlarge
   Las Meninas, painted in 1656

   One of the infantas, Margarita, the eldest daughter of the new Queen,
   is the subject of Las Meninas (1656, English: The Maids of Honour),
   Velázquez's magnum opus. Created four years before his death, it is a
   staple of the European baroque period of art. An apotheosis of the work
   has been effected since its creation; Luca Giordano, a contemporary
   Italian painter, referred to it as the "theology of painting," and the
   seventeenth century Englishman Thomas Lawrence cited it as the
   "philosophy of art," so decidedly capable of producing its desired
   effect. That effect has been variously interpreted; Dale Brown points
   out an interpretation that, in inserting within the work a faded
   portrait of the king and queen hanging on the back wall, Velázquez has
   ingeniously prognosticated the fall of the Spanish empire that was to
   gain momentum following his death. Another interpretation is that the
   portrait is in fact a mirror, and that the painting itself is in the
   perspective of the King and Queen, hence their reflection can be seen
   in the mirror on the back wall.

   It is said the king painted the honorary Cruz Roja (Red Cross) of the
   Orden de Santiago ( Order of Santiago) on the breast of the painter as
   it appears today on the canvas. However, Velázquez did not receive this
   honour of knighthood until three years after execution of this
   painting. Even the King of Spain could not make his favorite a belted
   knight without the consent of the commission established to inquire
   into the purity of his lineage. This aim of these inquiries would be to
   prevent the appointment to positions of anyone found to have even a
   taint of heresy in their lineage—that is, a trace of Jewish or Moorish
   blood or contamination by trade or commerce in either side of the
   family for many generations. The records of this commission have been
   found among the archives of the Order of Santiago. Velázquez was
   awarded the honour in 1659. His occupation as plebeian and tradesman
   was justified because, as painter to the king, he was evidently not
   involved in the practice of "selling" pictures.

   In his book The Order of Things, philosopher Michel Foucault devotes
   the entire opening chapter to a detailed analysis of Las Meninas. He
   describes the ways in which the painting problematizes issues of
   representation through its use of mirrors, screens, and the subsequent
   oscillations that occur between the image's interior, surface, and
   exterior.

Final years

   Had it not been for this royal appointment, which enabled Velázquez to
   escape the censorship of the Inquisition, he would not have been able
   to release his La Venus del espejo (c. 1644-1648, English: Venus at her
   Mirror) also known as The Rokeby Venus. It is the only surviving female
   nude by Velázquez.
   Detail of Las Meninas (Velázquez's self-portrait)
   Enlarge
   Detail of Las Meninas (Velázquez's self-portrait)

   There were essentially only two patrons of art in Spain—the church and
   the art-loving king and court. Bartolome Esteban Murillo was the artist
   favored by the church, while Velázquez was patronized by the crown. One
   difference, however, deserves to be noted. Murillo, who toiled for a
   rich and powerful church, left little means to pay for his burial,
   while Velázquez lived and died in the enjoyment of good salaries and
   pensions.

   One of his final works was Las hilanderas (The Spinners), painted circa
   1657, representing the interior of the royal tapestry works. It is full
   of light, air and movement, featuring vibrant colors and careful
   handling. Anton Raphael Mengs said this work seemed to have been
   painted not by the hand but by the pure force of will. It displays a
   concentration of all the art-knowledge Velázquez had gathered during
   his long artistic career of more than forty years. The scheme is
   simple—a confluence of varied and blended red, bluish-green, grey and
   black.

   In 1660 a peace treaty between France and Spain was to be consummated
   by the marriage of Maria Theresa with Louis XIV, and the ceremony was
   to take place in the Island of Pheasants, a small swampy island in the
   Bidassoa. Velázquez was charged with the decoration of the Spanish
   pavilion and with the entire scenic display. Velázquez attracted much
   attention from the nobility of his bearing and the splendor of his
   costume. On June 26 he returned to Madrid, and on the July 31 he was
   stricken with fever. Feeling his end approaching, he signed his will,
   appointing as his sole executors his wife and his firm friend named
   Fuensalida, keeper of the royal records. He died on August 6, 1660. He
   was buried in the Fuensalida vault of the church of San Juan Bautista,
   and within eight days his wife Juana was buried beside him.
   Unfortunately this church was destroyed by the French in 1811, so his
   place of interment is now unknown. There was much difficulty in
   adjusting the tangled accounts outstanding between Velázquez and the
   treasury, and it was not until 1666, after the death of King Philip,
   that they were finally settled.

Velázquez in modernity

   Until the nineteenth century, little was known outside of Spain of
   Velázquez's work. His paintings mostly escaped being stolen by the
   French marshals during the Peninsular War. In 1828 Sir David Wilkie
   wrote from Madrid that he felt himself in the presence of a new power
   in art as he looked at the works of Velázquez, and at the same time
   found a wonderful affinity between this artist and the English school
   of portrait painters, especially Henry Raeburn. He was struck by the
   modern impression pervading Velázquez's work in both landscape and
   portraiture. Presently, his technique and individuality have earned
   Velázquez a prominent position in the annals of European art, and he is
   often considered a father of the Spanish school of art. Although
   acquainted with all the Italian schools and a friend of the foremost
   painters of his day, he was strong enough to withstand external
   influences and work out for himself the development of his own nature
   and his own principles of art.

   Velázquez is often cited as a key influence on the art of Édouard
   Manet, important when considering that Manet is often cited as the
   bridge between realism and Impressionism. Calling Velázquez the
   "painter of painters," Manet admired Velázquez's use of vivid brushwork
   in the midst of the baroque academic style of his contemporaries and
   built upon Velázquez's motifs in his own art.

Modern recreations of Velázquez's classics

   The importance of Velázquez's art even today is evident in considering
   the respect with which twentieth century painters regard his work.
   Pablo Picasso presented the most durable homage to Velázquez in 1957
   when he recreated Las Meninas in his characteristically cubist form.
   While Picasso was worried that if he copied Velázquez's painting, it
   would be seen only as a copy and not as any sort of unique
   representation, he proceeded to do so, and the enormous work—the
   largest he had produced since Guernica in 1937—earned a position of
   relevance in the Spanish canon of art. Picasso retained the general
   form and positioning of the original in the framework of his
   avant-garde cubist style.

   Salvador Dalí, as with Picasso in anticipation of the tercentennial of
   Velázquez's death, created in 1958 a work entitled Velázquez Painting
   the Infanta Margarita. The colour scheme shows Dalí's serious tribute
   to Velázquez; the work also functioned, as in Picasso's case, as a
   vehicle for the presentation of newer theories in art and thought—
   nuclear mysticism, in Dalí's case.

   The Anglo-Irish painter Francis Bacon found Velázquez's portrait of
   Pope Innocent X to be one of the greatest portraits ever made. He
   created several expressionist variations of this piece in the 1950s;
   however, Bacon's paintings presented a more gruesome image of the pope,
   who had now been dead for centuries. One such famous variation,
   entitled Figure with Meat (1954), shows the pope between two halves of
   a bisected cow.

   Ricardo Pecharromán celebrated the quadricentennial of Velázquez's
   birth in 1999 by recreating a number of Velázquez's works in a
   postmodern style.
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