Juan de Pareja

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Portrait of Juan de Pareja
Diego Velázquez, c. 1650
Oil on canvas
81.3 × 69.9 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

Juan de Pareja (1610-1670), a native of Seville and mulatto son of a female slave, is primarily known as a member of the household and workshop of painter Diego Velázquez. He was also a painter in his own right, but never rose to the level of his teacher and seems to have executed only minor works.

[edit] Velázquez's Juan de Pareja

In 1648, as court painter to Philip IV of Spain, Diego Velázquez was sent to Rome to purchase works of art for the Alcázar in Madrid, and he brought Juan de Pareja with him. During his stay in Rome, Velázquez executed an oil portrait of Juan de Pareja, which was displayed as part of a larger exhibition of paintings at the Pantheon on March 19, 1650. According to Antonio Palomino's biography of Velázquez, the painting "was generally applauded by all the painters from different countries, who said that the other pictures in the show were art but this one alone was 'truth'."

Velázquez painted the Juan de Pareja as an exercise in preparation for his official portrait of Pope Innocent X. The Pope, a ruddy-faced man who would be depicted in the bright pink and crimson robes of his office, presented a tricky study in both color and composition. Additionally, since he would be executing a portrait from life, Velázquez would be forced to work quickly while still capturing the essence of Innocent X's character. The Juan de Pareja reflects Velázquez's exploration of the difficulties he would encounter in the Pope's portrait. To compensate for a restricted palette of colors, Velázquez adopted a loose, almost impressionistic style of brushwork to bring an intense vitality to his subject -- a style which would make both the Juan de Pareja and the subsequent portrait of Innocent X two of the most renowned paintings of his career.

The Juan de Pareja is currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, which purchased it in 1971. At the time, the purchase price of over $5.5 million set a new record for paintings at auction. This became a source of some controversy both for the museum and for its director, Thomas Hoving, who spearheaded the effort to acquire the work and considered it one of the finest paintings in the museum's collection. However, art prices have skyrocketed since the mid-1970s, and the Juan de Pareja could be expected to fetch easily ten times its purchase price today...