Car bomb kills 34

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Jaime Peña Diaz

Juan de Pareja de Velázquez (1650)

In 1648 Velázquez was dispatched to Rome by Philip IV of Spain to buy works of art for the Alcazar palace in Madrid. In Rome he painted an official portrait of Pope Innocent X (Galeria Doria Pamphili, Rome). Before starting work on the papal portrait he made an informal painting of his own assistant Juan de Pareja, a Sevillian of Moorish descent. This picture was exhibited in Rome on March 19, 1650. In his life of Velázquez (1724), Palomino writes that the painting "was generally applauded by all the painters from different countries, who said that the other pictures in the show were art but this one alone was 'truth.'" The direct approach in this painting contrasts with the more formal structure of Velázquez's state portraits.

The young Velázquez once declared, "I would rather be the first painter of common things than second in higher art."

Metropolitan Museum, NYC