Portrait of Gaspar de Guzmán, Duke of Olivares

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Portrait of Gaspar de Guzmán, Duke of Olivares (Diego Velázquez)
Portrait of Gaspar de Guzmán, Duke of Olivares
Diego Velázquez , 1624
Oil on Ln
202 × 107 cm
Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo , Sao Paulo

The image of Gaspar de Guzmán, Duke of Olivares is a painting by Diego Velázquez from 1624. It depicts Gaspar de Guzmán, Duke of Olivares , Prime Minister and favorite ( valido ) of King Philip IV of Spain , at the age of 37. The picture has belonged to the Museu de Arte in São Paulo since 1947 . Another portrait of the Duke of the same age, ascribed to Velázquez, is in the possession of the Hispanic Society of America in New York.

Gaspar de Guzmán, Duke of Olivares ,
around 1625;
Oil on linen, 216 × 129.5 cm; Hispanic Society of America , New York

Historical background

In 1621 Philip IV ascended the Spanish throne at the age of 17. In the same year he appointed his former tutor and confidante Gaspar de Guzmán Duke of Olivares as prime minister. Olivares held this office until he fell out of favor in 1643. In 1622 the then 23-year-old Velázquez came from Seville to Madrid to gain a foothold as a painter in the vicinity of the royal court. In the spring of 1623 he painted a portrait of the young king on behalf of Olivares, who may have met him during a stay in Seville, which was welcomed at court. On October 6, 1623, Velázquez was appointed court painter to the king and received a salary of 20 ducats a month. The portrait of the duke was created in 1624 either by order of Antonia de Ipanierreta († 1634), a lady-in-waiting and later caretaker of the heir to the throne Balthasar Carlos, or by order of her family, who paid for the picture.

history

According to the inventory from 1668, the painting was in the possession of the Corral-Ipanierreta family and was inherited by the family until the 19th century. In 1906 it was bought by José Antonio Azlor de Aragon, Duque de Luna (1873–1964). After several changes of ownership, the picture came into the collection of Weetman Dickinson Pearson (1856–1927), first Viscount Cowdray, and was put up for auction at Sotheby's in 1947 by his heir, Lord Cowdray. On June 11, 1947, the picture was acquired by the newly founded Museo de Arte in Sao Paulo. The picture is a highlight of the Brazilian collection, which was built up from 1947 by the former European gallery owner Pietro Maria Bardi (1909–1999) with massive financial and non-material support from the Brazilian media mogul Assis Chateaubriand (1892–1968).

Nothing is known about the commissioner of the New York picture, which has suffered from restorations in the course of its history and which has experienced several write-ups and ascriptions through art historiography. The picture first appeared in a Madrid collection at the beginning of the 19th century, which was dissolved in 1827, and then ended up in England, where it changed hands several times. In 1909 the American art collector Arabella Huntington acquired the painting. She gave the picture in 1910 as a gift to the Hispanic Society of America in New York, founded by her son Archer Milton Huntington .

description

Velázquez depicts the duke as a full-length figure in front of a diffuse gray, architecturally indeterminate background. The duke wears his black official robe with the signs of his court offices. The oversized golden key is a sign of his office as Sumiller de Corps , a kind of majordomo, the two golden spurs on his belt a sign of his office as royal riding master. The golden chain of the Order of the Calatrava runs diagonally across his chest . The corresponding red cross on his left chest is half hidden by the heavy coat that he threw over his shoulder. The left hand grasps the pommel ( pommeau ) of his sword. With his left hand he leans on the corner of a table, which is covered with a heavy red, gold-lined velvet cloth that almost reaches the floor. At the very left of the picture you can see part of his helmet on the table. Compared to the Duke's massive appearance, whose broad upper body is additionally emphasized by the shoulder pads of the doublet and the fullness of the coat, the narrow head over the simple, light gray stand-up collar (Spanish: Gollila ) looks disproportionately small.

The New York picture differs in several ways from the picture in São Paulo. Here, too, the Duke is dressed in a black robe, he is also bareheaded, standing not next to but in front of the table with the velvet cover on which he is resting his right hand. In his hand he is holding a long riding crop as the insignia of his office as royal riding master, which gave him access to the king at any time. The space also remains architecturally indefinite, but it is ennobled by a red curtain of honor on the upper right of the picture. He wears the cloak with the green cross of the Alcantara Order, which was awarded to him in 1624, and which swings out over the sword, the handle of which Olivares grips with a firm hand, to the outer edge of the picture. The medal sash is held together over his heart with a gold-colored bow. He also wears a heavy gold chain over his chest.

The posture of the duke has changed significantly. He looks squat, the head sits on a short neck, the skull is no longer oval and elongated, but angular, which is also emphasized by the beard trimmed in a square shape. He is no longer standing with his legs apart, almost frontal to the viewer, but has turned from the central axis to the right and looks at the viewer with a sharp look over the forward left shoulder. Basically, he is mirroring the same pose as King Philip in the portrait completed in 1628, which is now kept in the Prado.

Carl Justi already asked himself whether the picture of the minister was painted as a counterpart to the portrait of the king, which goes beyond a superficial similarity in the pictorial arrangement. As Ekkehard Mai explains in an essay, it was only in modern times that the formation of a systematically organized government and administration in a regulated state led to the subordination of service at court. At the same time, the development of a hierarchically structured servitude led to a claim to personal power and its visual representation.

According to Warnke, this shows that Velázquez king and minister “look together”, that the “Institution des Privado” (= confidante of the king) was firmly established in Spain and that the government was represented by a dual leadership team. Diego de Saavedra Fajardo (1584–1648) put it differently in his book Empresas Politicas , published in 1640 : “The ministers are the images of majesty”.

literature

  • Martin Warnke : Velázquez. Form and reform. Cologne: Dumont 2005. ISBN 978-3-8321-7642-6
  • John H. Elliott: The Count-Duke of Olivares. The Statesman in an Age of Decline . New Haven London, 1986.
  • José Lopez-Rey: Velázquez. Painter the painter. Catalog raisonné. 2 volumes. Cologne: Taschen, Wildenstein Inst. 1996. ISBN 3-8228-8723-4
Cat. No. 32, 30, 78, 88
  • Jonathan Brown: Velazquez. Painter and Courtier New Haven, London 1986.
  • Ekkehard Mai: Minister . In: Handbook of Political Iconography. Vol. 2. Munich: Beck 2011. pp. 149–156. ISBN 978-3-406-57765-9 .

Web links

Commons : Portrait of the Duke of Olivares  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Lopez-Rey 1996. Vol. 2. p. 30.
  2. Lopez-Rey 1996. Vol. 2. Catalog No. 30th
  3. Lopez-Rey 1996. Vol. 2. p. 74.
  4. Gary Tinterow, Genevieve Lacambre: Manet / Velazquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting , p. 449
  5. Warnke 2005, p. 35.
  6. Warnke 2005, p. 49.
  7. ^ Justi [2. Edition 1910]. Reprint Munich 1985. p. 181.
  8. May 2011. p. 154.
  9. Warnke 2005, p. 55.
  10. "Son los ministros retratos de la majestad". Quoted from Warnke 2005, p. 55.
  11. ^ Diego de Saavedra Fajardo: Empresas políticas. [1640]. Madrid: Cátedra 1999.