Juan de Pareja (1610-1670), a native of
SevilleSeville is the artistic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of above sea level. The inhabitants of the city are known as Sevillanos or...
(
SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.
[The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though España , Estado español and Nación española are used interchangeably...]
) and
mulattoMulatto denotes a person with one white parent and one black parent or a person who has both black ancestry and white ancestry. The term may be perceived as pejorative in some cultures and situations. Its current usage varies greatly.-Etymology:...
son of a female slave, is primarily known as a member of the household and workshop of painter
Diego VelázquezDiego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was a Spanish painter who was 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...
. He was also a painter in his own right; his 1661 work "The Calling of St. Matthew" (sometimes also referred to as "The Vocation of St. Matthew") is currently on display at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain.
In 1648, as court painter to
Philip IV of SpainPhilip IV was King of Spain between 1621 and 1665, sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands, and King of Portugal until 1640. On the eve of his death in 1665, the Spanish empire reached its territorial zenith spanning almost 3 billion acres...
, Diego Velázquez was sent to
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
to purchase works of art for the
AlcázarAn alcázar is a Spanish castle, from the Arabic word القصر al qasr meaning palace or fortress. Many cities in Spain have an alcázar. In Portugal there is also a city called Alcácer do Sal , which belonged to Arabs during the Muslim occupation of the Iberian Peninsula.-Famous Alcázars:*The Alcázar...
in
MadridMadrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. It is the third-most populous municipality in the European Union after Greater London and Berlin, and its metropolitan area is the third-most populous city by urban area in the European Union after Paris and London.The city is located on the river...
, and he brought Juan de Pareja with him.
Juan de Pareja (1610-1670), a native of
SevilleSeville is the artistic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of above sea level. The inhabitants of the city are known as Sevillanos or...
(
SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.
[The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though España , Estado español and Nación española are used interchangeably...]
) and
mulattoMulatto denotes a person with one white parent and one black parent or a person who has both black ancestry and white ancestry. The term may be perceived as pejorative in some cultures and situations. Its current usage varies greatly.-Etymology:...
son of a female slave, is primarily known as a member of the household and workshop of painter
Diego VelázquezDiego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was a Spanish painter who was 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...
. He was also a painter in his own right; his 1661 work "The Calling of St. Matthew" (sometimes also referred to as "The Vocation of St. Matthew") is currently on display at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain.
Velázquez's Juan de Pareja
In 1648, as court painter to
Philip IV of SpainPhilip IV was King of Spain between 1621 and 1665, sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands, and King of Portugal until 1640. On the eve of his death in 1665, the Spanish empire reached its territorial zenith spanning almost 3 billion acres...
, Diego Velázquez was sent to
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
to purchase works of art for the
AlcázarAn alcázar is a Spanish castle, from the Arabic word القصر al qasr meaning palace or fortress. Many cities in Spain have an alcázar. In Portugal there is also a city called Alcácer do Sal , which belonged to Arabs during the Muslim occupation of the Iberian Peninsula.-Famous Alcázars:*The Alcázar...
in
MadridMadrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. It is the third-most populous municipality in the European Union after Greater London and Berlin, and its metropolitan area is the third-most populous city by urban area in the European Union after Paris and London.The city is located on the river...
, and he brought Juan de Pareja with him. During his stay in Rome, Velázquez executed an oil portrait of Juan de Pareja, which was displayed as part of a larger exhibition of paintings at the
PantheonThe Pantheon is a building in...
on March 19, 1650. According to Antonio Palomino's biography of Velázquez, the painting "was generally applauded by all the painters from different countries, who said that the other pictures in the show were art but this one alone was 'truth'."
Velázquez painted the
Juan de Pareja as an exercise in preparation for his official portrait of Pope Innocent X. The Pope, a ruddy-faced man who would be depicted in the bright pink and crimson robes of his office, presented a tricky study in both color and composition. Additionally, since he would be executing a portrait from life, Velázquez would be forced to work quickly while still capturing the essence of Innocent X's character. The
Juan de Pareja reflects Velázquez's exploration of the difficulties he would encounter in the Pope's portrait. To compensate for a restricted palette of colors, Velázquez adopted a loose, almost impressionistic style of brushwork to bring an intense vitality to his subject—a style which would make both the
Juan de Pareja and the subsequent portrait of Innocent X two of the most renowned paintings of his career.
The
Juan de Pareja is currently on display at the
Metropolitan Museum of ArtThe Metropolitan Museum of Art, known colloquially as The Met, is an art museum located on the eastern edge of Central Park, along what is known as Museum Mile in New York City, USA. It has a permanent collection containing more than two million works of art, divided into nineteen curatorial...
in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
, which purchased it in 1971. At the time, the purchase price of over $5.5 million set a new record for paintings at auction. This became a source of some controversy both for the museum and for its director,
Thomas HovingThomas P. F. Hoving , is an American museum executive and consultant and the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.- Biography :...
, who spearheaded the effort to acquire the work and considered it one of the finest paintings in the museum's collection. However, art prices have skyrocketed since the mid-1970s, and the
Juan de Pareja could be expected to fetch easily ten times its purchase price today.
External links