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Collected for the first time in a new translation: two of the most
important and far-reaching biographies of an artist ever written,
and our principal sources for the life of Velazquez. Diego
Velazquez (1599-1660) is for many the greatest painter ever to have
lived. His astonishing naturalism had an immediate and lasting
impact on his contemporaries, inspiring both awe and fierce debate.
Most of what we know about Velazquez' life and incomparably
successful career comes from these two biographies. Francisco
Pacheco, a second rank painter, was Velazquez' teacher and
eventually father-in-law - possibly the closest relationship
between a painter and his biographer in all art. This Life, part of
Pacheco's theoretical work, the Art of Painting, has never been
translated before, and it reveals the scale of the challenge to
traditional painting presented by Velazquez' insurmountable talent.
Antonio Palomino, the Spanish Vasari, was born just after Velazquez
died, but knew many of the painter's friends and colleagues. His
biography, precise and detailed, is an incomparable source, but
like Pacheco's text, also tackles the aesthetic debate engendered
by Velazquez' choice of subject matter and style. Together these
biographies give an excitingly close insight into the mind and
world of a great painter. The introduction by Michael Jacobs
situates these biographies in the context of Spain's Golden Age,
and the intellectual ferment in painting and in the theatre that
lie behind Velazquez' magic. The translations are by Nina Ayala
Mallory, the leading scholar of Spanish artistic biographies. The
volume is richly illustrated with 30 plates illustrating the full
gamut of Velazquez' work.
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