The day before yesterday in the night, I could listen on the radio to a spanish journalist, Javier Sierra, talking about a painting by, perhaps, Diego Velazquez, the famous painter from Seville.
Javier Sierra explained that the painting is named “Retrato de caballero” = “Portrait of a gentleman” and it is said that there are many chances that the picture is by Velazquez.
"Portrait of a gentleman"
The Prado Museum, in their rooms, and for the first time in Spain, 'Portrait of a Man' from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, recently attributed to Velázquez.
The curator of European paintings at the Met, Keith Christiansen, considered "probable" that this painting is a portrait of the painter from Seville. The work is exhibited in the galleries devoted to Velazquez and intended as a tribute to Plácido Arango, who was until recently president of the Royal Board of the Museum.
At a press conference, Keith Christiansen has explained the recent allocation and how the portrait after cleaning and restoration last, came to light technical and representational strategies typically Velazquez. It also stresses that since the first observed on the walls of the box Metropolitan doubted that belonged to the workshop of Velázquez, as was thought at the Museum.
During the presentation of the painting in the Prado, Christiansen said before the picture of 'The Surrender of Breda', how man portrait Yorker anonymous soldier is identical to that shown on the far right of 'The Spear'. As well as advancing research and thanks to the collaboration of Jonathan Brown, finally, in 2009, chose to publish an article attributing as Velázquez original.
"The dynamism and animation that has the box, achieved through light vibrations and a very wise distribution of different grades of finish, guarantee its attribution to Velázquez, and also supports another feature of the work: the feeling that transmitted being made with little effort”, explained from the Prado Museum.
DISCREPANCIES REGARDING THE IDENTITY
But the identity of the model differences arise between the Prado and the Metropolitan. To explain his theory, Keith Christiansen compares to this mysterious man who is coming to the Prado with Valencia's Self (which retains the Museum of Fine Arts in Valencia) and the self-portrait of Velázquez appearing in Las Meninas, and insists his great similar.
Moreover, the curator of European Painting of MET has requested a report from a forensic expert in physiognomy, which claims that there is a "high probability" that the character portrayed in the self-portrait of Valencia and Las Meninas is the same person who which appears in the box at the Metropolitan.
However, both the deputy director of the Prado Museum, Gabriele Finaldi, as Javier Portus, chief of Spanish Painting of the gallery, are "many reasons" to doubt that this gentleman portrayed in the picture from the MET is Velazquez himself.
BY THE PRADO, NOT A SELF PORTRAIT OF VELAZQUEZ
Among the reasons Javier Portús wields include itself supposed anomaly in a dedicated box for display in the Hall of Realms have an imprint of the artist and the fact portrayed (The Surrender of Breda) took place ten years before be painted.
"In a box in the Hall of Realms is very rare that the self-portrait painter. With the data that there is very difficult to say who is a self-portrait of Velázquez”, says Portus, and remember that this idea is the curator of the Metropolitan product the nineteenth century mind when you thought it had to have any pictures of the painter footprint.
"The comparison between the two (the man in the picture of the MET and Velázquez's self-admitted) shows a different type, there is a wider forehead, eyebrows and lips more pronounced and a more southern", claims Javier Portús .
This 'Portrait of a Man', which will be exhibited in the Prado until 27 January, thanks to the sponsorship of the Fundación Amigos del Museo del Prado, had belonged since the eighteenth century, a German private collections, until in 1925 or 1926 passed to Joseph Duveen, the art dealer of antique painting more of their time.
To facilitate its commercial outlet, did restore the table based on criteria that meet the expectations of international collectors. This intervention created a homogeneous background defined the parts of the trunk that were just sketched, hair turned into a uniform mass and generally resulted in a very static and uniform image, a feeling that aging varnish only increased .
Best regards,
Luis.
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