Criticism Of Diego Velàzquezs Las Meninas, Sebastiàn de Morra, and Bal

Diego Velzquez was called the noblest and most commanding man among the artists of his country. He was a master realist, and no painter has surpassed him in the ability to seize essential features and fix them on canvas with a few broad, sure strokes. His men and women seem to breathe, it has been said his horses are to the full of action and his dogs of life. Because of Velzquez great skill in merging color, light, space, rhythm of line, and mass in such a way that all have equal value, he was known as the painters painter, as demonstrated in the paintings Las Meninas, Sebastin de Morra, and Baltasar Carlos and a Dwarf. Las Meninas is a pictorial summary and a commentary on the essential mystery of the visual world, as well as on the ambiguity that results when different states or levels interact or are juxtaposed. The painting of The proud Family also known as Las Meninas has always been regarded as an unsurpassable masterpiece. According to Palomino, it was finished in 1656, a nd, while Velzquez was painting it, the King, the fairy, and the Infantas Mara Teresa and Margarita often came to sojourn him at work. In the painting, the painter himself is seen at the easel the mirror on the rear wall reflects the half-length figures of Philip IV and Queen Mariana standing under a scarlet curtain. The Infanta Margarita is in the center, attended by two Meninas, or maids of honor, Doa Isabel de Velasco and Doa Mara Sarmiento, who curtsy as the latter offers her cocotte a drink of water in a bcaroa reddish earthen vessel on a tray. In the right sidle up stand a female dwarf, Mari-Brbola, and a midget, Nicols de Pertusato, who playfully puts his foot on the back of the mastiff resting on the floor. Linked to this large group there is some other formed by Doa Marcela de Ulloa, guardamujer de las damas de la Reina attendant to the ladies-in-waitingand an unidentified guardadamas, or escort to the same ladies. In the background, the aposentador, or Palace marshal , to the Queen, Don Jos Nieto Velzquez, stands on the steps leading into the room from the lit-up door. Las Meninas has three foci The figure of the Infanta Margarita is the most luminous the likeness of the Master himself is another and the third is provided by the half-length images of the King and the Queen in the mirror on the rear wall. Velzquez bui... ...asting perfection and imperfection of the two little figures almost unavoidably becomes a metaphor of the social and natural order. In these royal portraits, whatever the interpretation Velzquez made or whatever emotional reaction he experienced he kept to himself. Royalty, courtliness of the most rigid source was his task to portray not individual personality. Through his practice of using pigment in short or long, thin or thick, apparently overhasty and spontaneous but actually most skillfully calculated strokes, Velzquez was the precursor of the modern practice or direct painting.BibliographyBrown, Jonathan. Velzquez Pain ter and Courtier. New Haven and capital of the United Kingdom Yale University Press, 1986.Kleiner, Fred S., Mamiya, Christin J., Tansey Richard G. Gardners Art Through the Ages, vol. II. Harcourt college Publishers San Diego et al. 2001.Lopez-Rey, Jos. Velzquez Work and World. Greenwich, Connecticut New York Society, 1968.Internet Articlewww.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/velazquez/