Diego Velázquez: The 'painter of painters'

Although Picasso tends to overshadow everyone else, Andalucía has produced a remarkable number of artists whose influence spreads far beyond Spain, one of whom is Diego Velázquez. Praised by many art historians as the greatest Spanish painter before Picasso, Velázquez was considered the most influential figure in the history of Spanish portraiture.

He was born in Seville to a paternal family of Portuguese origin and a maternal Sevillian family. Although his date of birth is unclear, he was baptised in San Pedro church in Seville on 6 June 1599.

Developing an early interest in painting, Velázquez was an individualistic artist of the 17th-century Baroque era who went on to create scenes of great historical and cultural significance, along with numerous royal portraits as court painter for King Philip IV.

His work had a profound influence on many 19th-century French painters. During the 1800s, El Prado in Madrid became a pilgrimage site for ambitious French artists who admired his loose brushwork, naturalism and ability to suggest remarkable detail. One of his admirers was Édouard Manet, who referred to Velázquez as “the painter of painters”. Art historians see Manet as the key figure who carried Velázquez's ideas into modern painting.

Others include Claude Monet, who admired Velázquez's treatment of light and atmosphere; and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who, during a visit to Madrid, was said to have been deeply impressed by his portraits.

Another of his disciples was the Irish artist Francis Bacon, who created some of the most psychologically intense paintings of the 20th century. Bacon repeatedly reinterpreted Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X in his renowned Screaming Popes series, transforming the pope's open mouth into a haunting image that conveys the unsettling force of a silent yet deafening scream.

Although the largest collection of Velázquez's works is housed in Madrid's Prado museum, many of his most significant paintings can be found in major museums outside Spain. In fact, a considerable number of his early masterpieces left Spain several centuries ago.

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His Portrait of Pope Innocent X, often regarded as one of the greatest portraits ever painted, is housed in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj in Rome. One of his celebrated early masterpieces, the Waterseller of Seville, is part of the Wellington Collection in Apsley House in London: this includes numerous artworks collected by Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington, whose troops assisted Spain against the French during the War of Independence.