Velázquez: Painting from Life

Abstract

In the seventeenth century, Velazquez was said to paint from life, del natural. In 2005 we recog nize del natural and its later correlate, realism, as complicated notions expressed in quotes. The rea sons for this usage are made clear by recent examina tions of two paintings?Kitchen Scene of ca. 1618 in the Art Institute of Chicago and Portrait ofG?ngora of 1622 in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston?which show how complex Velazquez's representation of the world around him could be. Both paintings were created early in Velazquez's career, when his rendering of people and objects was starkly naturalistic. In Kitchen Scene (Figure 1), one finds pots and pans that were in daily use in Seville's kitchens, and a head of garlic next to the mortar used for mashing it. One also sees a dark-skinned figure who is unusual for personnel in most European kitchen scenes but could have existed in Velazquez's native Seville, where moriscos or former Muslims as well as African slaves worked as domestics. The temp tation has always been to see this as a slice of unmedi ated reality. Velazquez is famous for the magic of his brushwork even at this early date, and any attribution to him depends at least in part on the quality of the visible strokes. In the case of the Kitchen Scene, the damaged