Velazquez in Seville - Softcover

Davies, David; Harris, Enriqueta; Et Al

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0903598620 ISBN 13: 9780903598620

Publisher: National Galleries of Scotland, 1996

Synopsis

Diego Velazquez (1599-1660), considered by many to be the greatest of Spain's great painters, spent his crucial formative years in Seville, learning his craft and producing many early masterpieces. When he departed from his native city as a young man of 24, Velazquez's accomplishments were already impressive: he left to assume the position of Court Painter to Philip IV of Spain in Madrid. In this beautifully illustrated book, an international team of art scholars explores the importance of Seville for Velazquez. Discussions range across many topics, including Velazquez's education and training, Sevillian culture and Catholic theology, picaresque literature, and Velazquez's subject matter-portraiture, sacred subjects, and the bodegones (kitchen and tavern scenes with prominent still life) in which Velazquez developed his distinctive naturalistic style. The Seville of Velazquez's youth was the chief Spanish port of trade with the New World and a major religious center that witnessed the passionate controversy over the mystery of the Immaculate Conception, a subject depicted in an early Velazquez painting. Other surviving paintings from the artist's Sevillian years include his first dated painting, Old Woman Cooking Eggs (1618), and his famous masterpiece Water-seller of Seville. This book serves as the catalogue for a major exhibition on Velazquez's early work to be held at the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, August 8 through October 20, 1996. The exhibit also includes a selection of influential works by Velazquez's important contemporaries, such as the sculptor Montanes and painters Alonso Cano and Ribalta.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

The essays, by a number of distinguished scholars, inevitably overlap on some points. They also contain differing interpretation of certain subjects. Their variety, however, seems wholly appropriate, given the richness of the terrain they are covering. Velazquez and Seville individually merit exhibitions, let alone together! - from the Introduction.The subtlety and profundity of Velazquez's art are already evident in these early Sevillian works, which are here set in context by comparison with other paintings, sculptures and drawings by his contemporaries.

About the Author:

David Davies of University College, London, and Enriqueta Harris, the leading Velazquez specialist in Britain, devised the National Gallery of Scotland exhibition, Velazquez in Seville.

About this edition

• Publisher: National Galleries of Scotland
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0903598620
• ISBN 13: 9780903598620
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192