Art: Spain's Conquistador

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The theology of painting" is how one of Diego de Velazquez's 17th century admirers described his work. What did he mean? That the work was true; that it represented a truth about nature, as theology did about God; that this truth was conclusive, beyond further argument. In a culture ruled by King and church, where the arts were easily accused of frivolity and sensuality, this was a colossal claim. Very rarely, an artist gets to transform the conditions of his culture--not just add to them or jog their evolution, but alter them decisively. This is what Picasso did for America and Europe in the 20th century. Perhaps less obviously, Velazquez did the same for Spain in the 17th century. He showed that the nation's painting need not be provincial, that it could be open to Europe and, especially, to such Venetian masters as Titian. Titian had made masterpieces for Philip II of Spain; now Velazquez would work on the same scale for Philip IV, grandson of Titian's patron. With Velazquez at the court, Spain no longer needed to import its talent from abroad.

Through Jan. 16, the Frick Collection in New York City is marking the 400th anniversary of Velazquez's birth with a small but choice loan show--six paintings from New York museums. Some are well known, like the portrait of Juan de Pareja, Velazquez's Moorish slave and studio assistant. Others are less so, such as the fierce authoritarian portrait of Olivares, Philip IV's chief minister for finance and war. The show is an anti-blockbuster and not to be missed by anyone who cares about painting.

Velazquez couldn't have cared less about leaving a record of his own personality in his work. Confession (except to a priest) wasn't part of his culture. His objectivity formed itself around an almost punitively observed decorum. He must have felt he was a great painter, but his life's struggle was to establish himself as a great gentleman. No court was more hedged with exact signs and symbols of degree than that of the Spanish monarchy. Velazquez spent much of his adult life lobbying, campaigning, espaliering the family tree and sucking up to the noblesse in order to be granted the red cross of a Knight of Santiago; it meant more to him than any picture--whereas to us it means nothing, except as evidence of a great artist's hunger for social distinction. Yes, we would like to know more about Velazquez, but in front of the paintings it doesn't seem so bad that we don't.

Velazquez's achievement was unique in the Spain of his day. He soon grew out of painting religious pictures. Instead he created a secular and courtly art--mainly portraits--in which a meticulous realism was conjoined with an extraordinary sense of the mechanics of painting. Velazquez gives you the physical marks of the brush, declares in advance that they are special effects, and yet defies you to shake free from their illusion.