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Naturalistic style
- Velázquez is universally acknowledged as one of the world’s greatest artists. The naturalistic style in which he was trained provided a language for the expression of his remarkable power of observation in portraying both the living model and still life.
www.britannica.com/biography/Diego-Velazquez
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The strong modeling and sharp contrasts of light and shade of Velázquez’s early illusionistic style closely resemble the technique of dramatic lighting called tenebrism, which was one of the innovations of the Italian painter Caravaggio.
He began to paint in a precise tenebrist style, later developing a freer manner characterized by bold brushwork. In addition to numerous renditions of scenes of historical and cultural significance, he painted scores of portraits of the Spanish royal family and commoners, culminating in his masterpiece Las Meninas (1656).
His individualistic style of naturalism, a precursor to realism, favored authenticity over the romantic and differentiated him from others of his time who stayed bound to the traditional and historical ways of depicting their subjects.
- Spanish
- August 6, 1660
- Seville, Spain
But in early works such as The Supper at Emmaus (14.40.631), Velázquez abandoned Pacheco’s old-fashioned style and painted directly from life. Influenced by the naturalism of Caravaggio, he portrayed Christ and two of his disciples with dramatic facial expressions, sharply lit against a plain background, the forms solidly modeled in somber colors.
Early Style: Velázquez paints exactly what he sees, exquisitely rendering textures and fabrics without the need for added adornment or ornamentation. Like the painters of northern Italy, Velázquez's style is marked by a direct, confrontational naturalism.
During his early years in Seville, Velázquez produced traditional religious works such as The Immaculate Conception or Saint John the Evangelist on Patmos, and 'bodegones' - literally 'tavern scenes' or paintings of everyday life. Occasionally, and more unusually, he combined the two.
After a trip to Italy from 1629 to 1630, Velázquez was inspired to create his original style of painting, based on the notational application of pigment to create effects of light and color that approximate these natural phenomena to an extraordinary degree.
