Diego Vel Zquez The Paintings

"Explores the early works of seventeenth-century Spanish painter Diego Velâazquez. Focuses on works from 1617 to 1623, examining the painter's critical engagement with the artistic, religious, and social practices of his native Seville"--Provided by publisher.

The startling conclusion of The Late Paintings of Vel?uez is that Diego Vel?uez painted two of his most famous works, The Spinners and Las Meninas, as theoretically informed manifestos of painterly brushwork. As a pair, Giles Knox argues, the two paintings form a learned retort to the prevailing critical disdain for the painterly. Knox presents a Vel?uez who was much more aware of the art theory of his era than previously acknowledged, leading him to reinterpret Las Meninas and The Spinners as representing together a polemically charged celebration of the "handedness" of painting. Knox removes Vel?uez from his Iberian isolation and seeks to recover his highly self-conscious attempt to carve out a place for himself within the history of European painting as a whole. The Late Paintings of Vel?uez presents an artist who, like Annibale Carracci, Poussin, Rembrandt, and Vermeer was not only aware of contemporary theoretical writings on art, but also able to translate that knowledge and understanding into a distinctive and personal theory of painting. In Las Meninas and The Spinners, Vel?uez propounded this theory with paint, not words. Knox's rethinking of the dynamic relationship between text and image presents a case, not of writing influencing painting, or vice versa, but of the two realms being inextricably bound together. Painterly brushwork presented a challenge to writers on art not just because it was connected too intimately with the base actions of the hand; it was also devilishly hard to describe. By reading Vel?uez's painterly performance as text, Knox deciphers how Vel?uez was able to craft theoretical arguments more compelling and more vivid than any written counterparts.

The works of Spanish Baroque painter Diego Rodr�guez de Silva y Vel�zquez (6 June 1599 - 6 August, 1660). Composite 4 Edition.

Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez (1599-1660) is widely recognized as both the supreme exponent of the Spanish Golden Age and as one of the greatest artists of all time. During his lifetime, he was admired not only at the cosmopolitan court of King Philip IV in Madrid, but also by the imperial court in Vienna and the papal court in Rome. Rediscovered in the 19th century, his work became an essential stimulus to the development of modern painting. Fernando Checa's monograph recasts the traditional critical reception of Velazquez as a Realist master, exploring other avenues of interpretation by examining his relationship with Classicism and with the most progressive trends in painting in his day. At the heart of the book is the color catalogue, which includes Velazquez's entire oeuvre with numerous details.