Paintings

Twenty-eight major paintings by Diego Velázquez — from the earthy Seville bodegones of his youth to the luminous court portraits and the incomparable Las Meninas of his maturity. Velázquez is the painter's painter: Manet called him "the painter of painters," and Picasso painted fifty-eight variations on Las Meninas alone. His technique is deceptively simple — what appears at close range as loose, almost careless brushwork resolves at viewing distance into the most convincing representation of reality ever achieved. The Surrender of Breda captures the magnanimity of victory with a humanity rare in war painting. The Portrait of Pope Innocent X is so brutally honest that the Pope himself said it was "too true." The late Infanta portraits shimmer with a silvery light that anticipates Impressionism by two centuries. And Las Meninas — the painting in which Velázquez paints himself painting the king and queen, reflected in a mirror at the back of the room — remains the most analyzed and debated painting in the Western canon.