Diego Velázquez

Diego Velázquez was a Spanish painter and one of the greatest artists in history. Born in Seville in 1599, he became the leading painter at the court of King Philip IV of Spain, producing masterful portraits of the royal family, courtiers, and even the palace dwarfs and jesters, whom he painted with remarkable humanity. His brushwork was astonishingly free and lifelike up close.

His most famous painting, Las Meninas, shows the young princess and her attendants in a scene of dazzling complexity, with the artist himself at his easel and the king and queen glimpsed in a mirror. It is endlessly studied and admired. Velázquez's honesty, subtlety, and mastery of paint have made him a hero to later artists from Goya to the Impressionists.