At the end of 1648, Velázquez left again for Italy in order to acquire ancient paintings and sculptures for the king and to hire fresco artists to decorate the palaces of Philip IV, he stayed there until mid-1651. He left Madrid on November 16, 1648, accompanied by his slave and notable painter in his own right, Juan de Pareja, embarking in Malaga in January and arriving on February 11, 1649 in Genoa, after which he went to Milan, Padua, Venice, Bologna, Modena, Parma, Florence, Rome and Naples. Early in 1650 in Rome, Velázquez was elected member of the two main organizations of artists of the Eternal City: the Academy of Saint Luke (“Accademia di San Luca“) in January, the leading and prestigious corporation of Roman painters, and the Congregazione dei Virtuosi del Pantheon in February 13. His membership from the Congregazione dei Virtuosi gave him the right to exhibit in the portico of the Pantheon on March 19, Saint Joseph’s Day, where he exhibited his Portrait of Juan de Pareja (1650), a work with which he obtained enormous success.
The Portrait of Juan de Pareja is one of the most outstanding painted by Velázquez. This portrait was exhibited in the “Rotunda” on the occasion of the feast of Saint Joseph, patron of the Congregation of the Virtuosos of the Pantheon, on March 19, 1650. Velázquez portrayed Juan in half profile and with his head slightly turned towards the viewer, whom he gazes at. He elegantly wears a cape and a neck of Flanders lace. The light falls directly on his forehead and spreads with bronze shines across his dark complexion. The figure is clearly outlined against the neutral background despite his reduced chromatic range, in which greens of different intensities dominate. The gesture is haughty and confident. Like in his portraits of jesters, Velázquez was capable of giving dignity to characters who, due to their profession or condition, where thought not to have such in social circles. In the same year, exactly on November 23, 1650, in Rome, Velázquez granted Juan de Pareja a letter of freedom, effective after four years on the condition that during that time he didn’t flee or commit criminal acts.
Months later, in August of 1650, Velázquez portrayed Pope Innocent X, one of the painter’s best, a symphony of red and white as a frame for the Pope’s reddish and restless face. At that time it was not common for popes to agree to sit for foreign artists. In this case the Pope had to make an exception because Velázquez had good references: he was traveling to Italy as painter for Philip IV, and it is also very possible that Innocent had known the painter decades before. It is said that, when the Pope saw his portrait completed, he exclaimed, somewhat bewildered: Troppo vero! (“Too truthful”). In gratitude, the pontiff gave Velázquez a medal and a gold chain. One of Velázquez’s artistic virtues was his ability to psychologically penetrate the character to show us those hidden aspects of his/her personality. The pope’s expression is tense, with a frown; totally opposite to the papal portraits made by Raphael, which oscillate between a more or less introspective and affable expression without reaching the almost aggressive countenance of this portrait of Innocent. With a red curtain as a backdrop, the red chair stands out, and on it the Pope’s clothing, also red. This superimposition of reds doesn’t crush the vigor of Innocent’s face. Velázquez didn’t idealize the pope’s complexion by giving it a pearly tone, but rather represented him with a reddish skin tone and with an unkempt beard, more in accordance with reality. The portrait of Pope Innocent X, who was born Giovanni Battista Pamphili, has remained in the hands of the Pamphili family since it was painted.
Within the pictorial evolution of Velázquez, we can see that in the execution of this painting his hand is much looser than at the beginning of his career, but he still continued to achieve the same quality, both in the depiction of fabrics and objects. We could almost say that he seems here to get closer and closer to what we can call an “impressionist” quality.
The English painter Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) praised this portrait as “the best portrait in all of Rome”. His opinion would be seconded, a century later, by Oscar Wilde. The French historian Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893) considered this portrait “the masterpiece of all portraits” and that “once seen, it is impossible to forget.” The contemporary artist Francis Bacon (1909-1992) made about 40 interpretations of Velázquez’s Portrait of Innocent X as a way to illustrate de deformities of the human mind through the study of the coldness and relentless of this image of the Pope, both in the same format and in close ups of the head only. It is told that he relied only on photographs of the painting and that he never saw the original, despite having had the opportunity to do so, claiming that he could not ‘bear its impact’. Today it is believed that he did see it later in Rome.
The excellent work on the Pope’s portrait triggered other members of the papal curia to desire portraits by Velázquez, thus in 1650 he portrayed other characters close to Innocent: Cardinal Camillo Astalli, Monsignor Camillo Massimi (Pope’s waiter) and Ferdinando Brandani known as the Pope’s barber. In this small portraits stand out the air of intimacy and realism that Velázquez was able to give to his sitters, focusing on the description of their faces and leaving the rest of the areas in darkness, painted with neutral tones. Their chromatic range is also very sober.
Celebrated by all artists and art aficionados, in an artistic atmosphere that fully satisfied him, Velázquez would have stayed indefinitely in Rome if Philip IV had not urged his ambassadors to activate his return, not only to enjoy his services, but also to talk about the many statues and paintings he obtained while in Italy and to have him portray his new young wife, Doña Mariana of Austria. Velázquez then left Genoa in January 1651 and in June he was back in Madrid. Six years later he will try to return to Italy, but the king won’t grant him the permit.
During this same period, he executed one of his masterpieces: the Venus at her Mirror (ca. 1647-1651), considered the most beautiful nude in Spanish painting. It is an oil painting of masterful execution: firm white, pink and gray brushstrokes, with the blue touches of Cupid. The theme of Venus’s boudoir (toilet) had been previously treated by two of the masters who had the most influence on Velázquez: Tiziano and Rubens, but due to its erotic implications it created serious reluctance in Spain. Velázquez’s Venus brings something new to this theme: the goddess is lying on her side while giving her back and shows her face to the viewer reflected in the mirror. Francisco Pacheco, Velázquez’s teacher, advised painters who were forced to paint a female nude to use honest women as models for the head and hands only, imitating the rest of their bodies based on observation and study of statues or engravings.
In Spain at the time it was permissible for artists to use male nude models for studies. However, the use of female nude models was frowned upon. The Venus at her Mirror is one of the first complete nudes in Spanish painting, and the only one conserved by Velázquez. Contemporary Spanish attitude towards nude painting was unique in Europe. More than a lack of nudes in Spanish art (as there were male nudes), was the absence of female nudes. In general, for Spanish art, while the male nude better expressed an ideal vision, the female’s was more associated with carnality. In 17th century Spanish art, the norm for the female body was that it always had to be chastely covered. But Spanish painters, such as Alonso Cano or José Antolínez, found in the figures of Eve and some saints and martyrs, such as the Magdalene, a way to show their aptitude in the subject. The nude was very unusual in 17th century Spanish art as it was officially discouraged. Both the painting and the public exhibition of a ‘lascivious’ nude were considered a mortal sin. However, within intellectual and aristocratic circles, they were accepted as artistic pieces, leaving aside the question of their morality, and it was not uncommon to find nudes and mythologies in the inventories of private collections. Prominent collectors, like the King, tended to keep the nudes together in a relatively private room; in Philip IV’s case it was the room where he retired after eating, which contained works by Tiziano and the Rubens that he himself commissioned.
Venus at her Mirror shows us the goddess Venus in an erotic pose, lying on a bed and looking into a mirror held by her son Cupid. Though a mythological theme, Velázquez here gave it a mundane treatment: the woman we see is not a goddess but simply a woman. In this work though, he dispensed with the ironic touch that he infused in his previous paintings of Bacchus, Mars or Vulcan. Venus reclines languidly on her bed, with her back toward the viewer and her knees bent. She is shown without the mythological paraphernalia that is normally included in depictions of the scene; jewels, roses and myrtle are absent. And, unlike most previous portraits of the goddess, which showed her with blonde hair, Velázquez’s Venus is here brunette. We can identify her as the Goddess Venus because of the presence of her son Cupid, who also appears without his usual bow and arrows. Cupid, as a chubby little kid, has in his hands a pink silk ribbon that is folded over the mirror and curls around its frame. The most original element of the composition is the mirror that Cupid holds, in which the goddess looks outward, at the viewer through her image reflected in it, which appears blurred by the effect of distance, thus she only reveals us a vague reflection of her facial features. The blurred image can be taken as a baroque contradiction, since Venus is the goddess of beauty, but here we can’t clearly distinguish it. The folds of the bed sheets echo the goddess’ body, emphasizing her curves. The composition mainly uses shades of red, white, and gray, even on Venus’ skin. Here, Velázquez was also able to achieve depth thanks to the way he worked the composition; he placed objects and figures one after another: the various sheets, Venus’ body, the mirror, Cupid, the diagonal curtain, and the back wall, all give us the sensation of a deep space.
Partly due to censorship of this work, the visual and structural innovations of this portrait of Venus were not studied by other artists until relatively recently. The simplicity with which Velázquez showed the female nude, without jewelry or any other accessory usual to the goddess, found its replica in later nude studies by artists like Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), Édouard Manet (1832-1883), and others. Manet, in his straight forward female nude Olympia (1863-1865), paraphrased Venus at her Mirror in her pose and by suggesting the presence of a real woman rather than an ethereal goddess. Olympia shocked the Parisian art world when it was first exhibited in 1865. As Olympia looks directly and defiantly outwards, at the viewer, Velázquez’s Venus does it through her own reflection in her mirror.
The honors Velázquez received in Rome, not only as a servant of the king of Spain but as a painter (since the prejudices of the nobility against manual labor were much less there), made him yearn for what he had longed for: a habit from a Military Order. All Spanish men of the 17th century wanted a habit from the Orders of Santiago, Calatrava, Alcántara or Montesa, especially from the first. Being a member of these orders was, for a painter, the most palpable demonstration of being a knight, and not having to pay taxes like other manual workers did. The desire for honor and personal interest were combined in the eagerness of the Spanish painters to access that dignity, which placed them, in the stratified society of their time, ahead of the knights without habit and the mere hidalgos, and immediately behind the lords. But the rules were strict, the Knights of the habit prevented from entering their ranks those who didn’t amply prove their ‘purity of blood’ (that is, not being descendants of Moors, Jews, or converts), their nobility, and the fact that no one in their families had exercised a trade that required manual activity. For the Order’s Council, the profession of painter was considered dishonorable as it was a manual occupation. In Italy, things were seen with fewer rigors: talent had always triumphed over birth rights.
The honors that Velázquez learned had been granted before to other artists encouraged him to request, upon his return to Madrid in June 1651, the knight’s habit of the Order of Santiago. This year, 1651, also marked the date of the birth of the most charming of the painter’s models: the Infanta Margarita. The following year, 1652, Velázquez would receive the appointment of Royal Chambermaster, a title that many knights would desire.
But was until the Royal Decree of June 12, 1658, that the king decided to grant the painter what he longed for, the habit of Santiago. This began a complicated process, in which Velázquez had to ensure that he never made a living from painting, nor did he sell paintings, nor did he paint except to obey His Majesty, which he proved with the testimonies of fellow painters Alonso Cano, Zurbarán, Nardi and Carreño, who declared against their professional pride and their convictions. The finicky Council of the Order of Santiago would have never been convinced of the nobility of Velázquez’s ancestors if the king himself didn’t intervene and finally managed to obtain the knighthood for the painter. From the time he longed to wear the habit of an Order’s knight, back in 1636, until he was finally able to put one on, in 1659, 23 years would pass… And the habit would serve him, more than anything else, as a shroud.
The Artistic Adventure of Mankind 