In addition to numerous renditions of scenes of historical and cultural significance, he painted scores of portraits of the Spanish royal family and commoners, culminating in his masterpiece Las Meninas (1656).

The elder, Francisca de Silva Velázquez y Pacheco (1619–1658), married painter Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo at the Church of Santiago in Madrid on 21 August 1633.

[18][19] The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception (1618–19) follows a formula used by Pacheco, but replaces the idealized facial type and smoothly finished surfaces of his teacher with the face of a local girl and varied brushwork.

[20] His other religious works include The Adoration of the Magi (1619) and Saint John the Evangelist on the Island of Patmos (1618–19), both of which begin to express his more pointed and careful realism.

The golilla replaced the earlier court fashion of elaborate ruffed collars as part of Philip's dress reform laws during a period of economic crisis.

Velázquez won, with a painting (destroyed in a fire at the palace in 1734)[30] which records say depicted Philip III pointing with his baton to a crowd of men and women being led away by soldiers, while the female personification of Spain sits in calm repose.

Velázquez's first mythological painting,[32] it has been interpreted variously as a depiction of a theatrical performance, as a parody, or as a symbolic representation of peasants asking the god of wine to give them relief from their sorrows.

Although this first visit is recognized as a crucial chapter in the development of his style—and in the history of Spanish Royal Patronage, since Philip IV sponsored his trip—few details and specifics are known of what the painter saw, whom he met, how he was perceived and what innovations he hoped to introduce into his painting.

[18] In Philip IV on Horseback (1634–35), the king is represented in profile in an image of imperturbable majesty, demonstrating expert horsemanship by executing an effortless levade.

[40] Its symbolic treatment of a Spanish military victory over the Dutch eschews the rhetoric of conquest and superiority that is typical in such scenes, in which a general on horseback looks down on his vanquished, kneeling opponent.

Two are notable: one is full-length, stately and dignified, in which he wears the green cross of the order of Alcantara and holds a wand, the badge of his office as master of the horse; in the other, The Count-Duke of Olivares on Horseback (c. 1635), he is flatteringly represented as a field marshal during action.

[46] The equivocal image has been interpreted in various ways: Javier Portús describes it as a "reflection on reality, representation, and the artistic vision", while Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez says it "has also been seen as a melancholy meditation on the arms of Spain in decline".

Velázquez also painted several buffoons and dwarfs in Philip's court, whom he depicted sympathetically and with respect for their individuality, as in The Jester Don Diego de Acedo (1644), whose intelligent face and huge folio with ink-bottle and pen by his side show him to be a wise and well-educated man.

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.

[55] As part of his mission to procure decorations for the Room of Mirrors at the Royal Alcazar of Madrid, Velázquez commissioned Matteo Bonuccelli to cast twelve bronze copies of the Medici lions.

[57] Accordingly, after visiting Naples—where he saw his old friend Jose Ribera—and Venice, Velázquez returned to Spain via Barcelona in 1651, taking with him many pictures and 300 pieces of statuary, which afterwards were arranged and catalogued for the king.

In 1652 he was specially chosen by the king to fill the high office of aposentador mayor, 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.

[59] One of the infantas, Margaret Theresa, the eldest daughter of the new queen, appears to be the subject of Las Meninas (1656, English: The Maids of Honour), Velázquez's magnum opus.

Dale Brown says Velázquez may have conceived the faded image of the king and queen on the back wall as a foreshadowing of the fall of the Spanish Empire that was to gain momentum following Philip's death.

The 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.

Bartolomé Esteban 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 a good salary and pension.

Velázquez's final portraits of the royal children are among his finest works and in the Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Blue Dress[64] the painter's personal style reached its high-point: shimmering spots of color on wide painting surfaces produce an almost impressionistic effect—the viewer must stand at a suitable distance to get the impression of complete, three-dimensional spatiality.

The hope that was placed at that time in the sole heir to the Spanish crown is reflected in the depiction: fresh red and white stand in contrast to late autumnal, morbid colors.

A small dog with wide eyes looks at the viewer as if questioningly, and the largely pale background hints at a gloomy fate: the little prince was barely four years old when he died.

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.

Although acquainted with all the Italian schools and a friend of the foremost painters of his day, Velázquez was strong enough to withstand external influences and work out for himself the development of his own nature and his own principles of art.

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 British school of portrait painters, especially Henry Raeburn.

[82] Although Picasso was concerned that his reinterpretations of Velázquez's painting would be seen merely as copies rather than as unique representations,[citation needed] the enormous works—the largest he had produced since Guernica (1937)—entered the canon of Spanish art.

[91][92] In October 2011, it was confirmed by art historian Dr. Peter Cherry of Trinity College Dublin through X-ray analysis that a portrait found in the UK in the former collection of the 19th century painter Matthew Shepperson is a previously unknown work by Velázquez.

The portrait is of an unidentified man in his fifties or sixties, who could possibly be Juan Mateos, the Master of the Hunt for Velázquez's patron, King Philip IV of Spain.