Reviews (1)

A MASTERPIECES IN ART CATALOGUES
JOSE LOPEZ-REY IN HIS BOOK CATALOGUE RAISONNE GATHERS ALL OF THE VELAZQUEZ PAINTINGS, FROM THOSE IN PRIVATE HANDS AND THOSE IN PUBLIC GALLERIES, ALSO HE TELLS US ABOUT THE BEST VELAZQUEZ COLLECTIONS IN THE WORLD : LIKE THOSE AT THE PRADO, THE NATIONAL GALLERY AND THE MET ... Read more

Book Description

Velázquez's 1656 masterpiece Las Meninas has inspired an avalanche of published attention since it was first placed on public view in the Museo del Prado in 1819. The essays in this volume survey the responses to the painting in the nineteenth century, when Velázquez's fame outside Spain peaked. They include introductions to interpretations of Las Meninas by twentieth-century art historians, critics, philosophers, and art theorists, as well as the modern appropriation of the work by Picasso. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Velazquez is King
This is the best book I have yet seen on Velazquez. Informative and lushly illustrated: its got the pictures AND the thousand words (and more). As a painter myself (www.nancybeamiller.com) I use this book almost like a holy book; for guidance, inspiration and refreshment of the spirit.

Best place to start, or continue study
Having never read a book on Velazquez, I took a suggestion from one of my teachers and picked this one up at the library (art books are too expensive!). Being a fine arts/art history student, this was like discovering gold. The book is very well-written. I was able to travel the halls of the Spanish court with ease, because of the lucid, conversational style of writing. Brown doesn't mince words, and his inclusion of 17th century Spanish history is done where it needs to be. Everything in the book is there to inform the reader about Velazquez, whether it's his life, technique, or those around him. Most interesting is how the mood and frivolities of court greatly affected Velazquez's output. Brown states in his introduction that the book is for both the casual reader, and the scholar. After reading the book, this is very true. Scholars would do well to read this book, as Brown offers highly educated opinions and conclusions on Velazquez's style of painting, and the internal and external reasons around the artist that made him paint the way he did, both in quality and quantity. If you can afford this, buy it by all means. It offers the student a great grounding from which to explore Velazquez's paintings, and the techniques seen therein.

To know Velazquez
Very interesting book with a good analysis of painter and his paintings. ... Read more

Book Description

The Cambridge Companion to Velázquez offers a synthetic overview of one of the greatest painters of Golden Age Spain and seventeenth century Europe.With contributions from art historians and those working in other disciplines, this book offers fresh approaches to the vast literature on this artist. The essays also guide the reader to an understanding of Velázquez's work--his training in his native Seville, reflections in his oeuvre of artistic currents from outside Spain, and how Velázquez's religious paintings may be understood within the religious context of Counter-Reformation Spain. ... Read more

Book Description

In this beautiful and engaging book, an art historian and a conservation scientist discuss the techniques Velzquez created in order to realize his artistic vision. Examining thirty works by Velzquez that span his entire career, the authors show how his technical achievement developed over time. ... Read more

Reviews (7)

important, interesting topic - mediocre results
I think the first reviewer has mentioned the important points, but I would highlight some of the conclusions.

The purpose of this book is to apply the tools of art history and conservation to the practical question of how Velasquez painted his masterpieces. This is a topic of primary interest to practicing painters, and it is an approach that may prove fruitful in the future, but I think is only moderately successful here.

The important contribution of this book is the large number of close up views of a small number of paintings. The image quality is good, though not of the highest quality.

The text and analysis does address the practical question of how the paintings were constructed, but only provides rather shallow results. The ground used, the pigment selection, additions to the canvas - these topics are well covered. But the more involved question of how the paint layers were developed was not really explained. In the end there is little information for someone seeking to understand precisely how these paintings were made.

As the first reviewer mentioned, the art historical background has a sort of "rah rah" quality. For example, referring to The Fable of Arachne: "The expressive potential of color posited in the works of Titian is here [by Velasquez] exploited in ways that this venerated old master could never have conceived."

How many stars should you give to the only book on this very important topic? If you are a painter you have to buy it. I give it three stars, and will keep the book for the illustrations.

Ouch! There's That "G" Word Again...
As other reviewers have mentioned, this book has many wonderful reproductions, including a lot of "extreme close-ups" (if you'll allow me to lift an expression from the movie "Wayne's World"!). The close-ups are great...you can see details of how Velazquez achieved certain effects- such as concentrated spots of pigment to represent the glitter of jewelery, or applying a transparent black "wash" over the white pages in a "book", to give the impression of writing in a book. Additionally, Professor Brown provides a nice biographical sketch of Velazquez in the first 20 pages of the book, and he writes very well indeed. The commentary that accompanies the plates contains a lot of fascinating historical information- we learn a lot about the "court" of Philip IV, the roles of dwarves and jesters, etc. The author goes into the symbolism included in the paintings- for example, the importance of showing the king in control of a horse (which implies he is a good ruler as well as a good horseman). One of the most fascinating plates is the portrait of Mariana of Austria, who was Philip's second wife. Professor Brown explains that Philip's first wife, and his only son, had died and the king needed to remarry and produce a male heir. Unfortunately, Mariana was Philip's niece. As you might expect, the only surviving male heir of their marriage, Charles II, proved incapable of ruling and also of having any children of his own. With his death, the Habsburg dynasty of Spain came to an end. But the physical act of painting the picture also ties into this sad story. Velazquez was a very "economical" painter (some might say lazy). He wasn't very productive, and he also didn't like to waste canvasses that he had worked on! In this case, he had started a canvas of Philip IV. The physical resemblance between Philip and his niece was so great that the artist was able to paint Mariana's face over Philip's. In close-up, Professor Brown even shows how you can see where Velazquez covered up the area on the upper lip which had contained the king's mustache! Many of the plates have similar interesting bits of information contained in the accompanying text. I felt that the book only deserved 4 stars rather than 5 for two reasons- after awhile, some of the technical information becomes boring for the lay reader....too many descriptions of the various pigments used in the "ground" layer of each painting and of the sizes of the additional strips of canvas added to the paintings, for example. The second reason is that Professor Brown is a little too free with the word "genius". He claims that Velazquez was capable of doing things that other major artists weren't able to accomplish. I'm not qualified to say whether or not Velazquez was a genius but, in general, I think the word is overused. The author fails to explain WHY Velazquez was a genius, and what exactly he could do that other important artists couldn't. Still, this is a fine book, with a very nice mixture of beautiful reproductions and lively, informative text.

Ingenius rendering of face and body expressions!
The book consists in essence of two parts: The first 20 pages cover briefly Velazquez's life, career, techniques, and materials. The rest of the book comments on the artist's works.

Concisely, the author discusses the artist's choice on (painting) supports, pigments and colors, and composition and execution, as a prelude for in-depth discussions of the artist's works that follow.

Common art appreciaters will enjoy beautiful paintings (of in general not-very-beautiful people) in which face expressions and body language are deploited ingeniusly by the artist to convey drunkeness, retardation, sovereignty, self-importance, etc...

As for readers who are artists, an in-depth discussion on each painting reveals (with the aid of radiograph) techniques and procedures Velazquez used to create his work. In essence, a majority of Velazquez paintings were prepared with a layer of flake white as foundation. Over the underpainting, the artist applied pigments of different homogeneity and thickness to render desired effects. In addition, close-up pictures of painting details allow readers to understand better the secrets of creating luminosity in the paintings of this painter.

Perhaps as interesting is that mistakes and corrections made by Velazquez in his masterpieces are also unveiled, indicating the fact that although ingenius, the artist did have certain "imperfections" in his art maneuver.

Details, details, and more details
This very fine book on the painter Velazquez is full of historical details, details of the master's painting techniques, and many photographic details of his masterpieces. The several close-up detail reproductions of each painting in the book show the artist's brush strokes and the weave of the canvas as the text describes the pigments used. This extraordinary art book deserves close examination.

Velazquez: the technique of Genius
Please, I would most grateful if you send me information about this publication in Spanish. I am very interested in buying it but I am not still fluent in English. Thank you. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

The seventeenth century saw a tremendous thematic and technical development in the realm of painting as artists experimented with realism and anatomical exactitude, and gave free expression to themes of sensuality. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Velazquez’ Venus at Her Mirror, also known as The Rokeby Venus. In this absorbing and comprehensive study Andreas Prater uses the much-studied and imitated painting to trace Venus’s depiction in art through the centuries.

Prater begins by offering a fresh and thoroughly detailed examination of Velazquez’s masterpiece. He delves into its numerous levels of meaning as well as its impact on the nude paintings of its day. He also looks at the painting’s fascinating history, including its attempted devastation by a suffragette in 1919. Velazquez’s self-admiring Venus is compared to her depictions in other well-known works by earlier artists, including da Vinci, Giorgione, and Titian, as well as in works by later artists such as Manet and Cabanel, and into the modern world of advertising. These comparisons provoke intriguing perspectives on the evolution of eroticism, feminism, and Christianity in art, and offer a renewed understanding of the influence one artist and one work can have on generations that follow. ... Read more

Book Description

In this beautifully illustrated book, an international team of art scholars explores the importance of Seville for Velzquez in his formative years.Discussions range from Vel zquez`s education, training, and subject matter to Sevillian culture Catholic theology, and picaresque literature. ... Read more

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Renaissance Quarterly, published by Renaissance Society of America on September 22, 1999. The length of the article is 1896 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Velazquez: Painter and Courtier.(Review)
Author: Helen Hills
Publication: Renaissance Quarterly (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 1999
Publisher: Renaissance Society of America
Volume: 52Issue: 3Page: 893

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Book Description

This book explains the origins of Los Borrachos ("The Drunkards"), a celebrated but bewildering mythological painting of international fame, created by Diego de Velázquez for Philip IV of Spain around 1628-29. By studying Velázquez's early years at court (1623-29) and the role that historians of his day assigned to Bacchus, the author reaches a dramatic new interpretation of the picture. There are many monographs devoted to Velázquez's entire life, but no book focuses on this painting or the artist's early career at court in such depth. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Orso's book helps bring new insight into Velazquez.
This book, with its throrough description of mythology as it existed in Spain around Velazquez time, helped me identify the subject of some other paintings from that period not in the public domain. Viewed together with paintings by Velazquez, Rubens and Patinir, they show Bacchus' birth place in Spain, his journey through Andalusia and his visit with his mother Semele in Olympus. Together they show that Velazquez and Rubens painted a whole series on Bacchus in Iberia based on the story by Ovid, adding even more proof to Professor Orso's hypothesis that the Los Barrachos painting is based on mythology. This discovery could not have been made without Internet, Professor Orso, and Amazon Books. Thanks to you all ... Read more