''Portrait of a Man'' is an
oil painting
Oil painting is a painting method involving the procedure of painting with pigments combined with a drying oil as the Binder (material), binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on canvas, wood panel, or oil on coppe ...
by
Diego Velázquez
Diego RodrÃguez de Silva y Velázquez (baptised 6 June 15996 August 1660) was a Spanish painter, the leading artist in the Noble court, court of King Philip IV of Spain, Philip IV of Spain and Portugal, and of the Spanish Golden Age. He i ...
, measuring 68.6 × 55.2 cm (27 × 21 in.), the frame is from Northern Spain and painted c. 1630–1635. The painting is in the collection of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...
in New York City. Long the subject of uncertainty regarding its authorship, ''Portrait of a Man'' was in 2009 re-attributed to Diego Velázquez.
[Vogel]
History
''Portrait of a Man'' once belonged to Count
Johann Ludwig, Reichsgraf von Wallmoden-Gimborn, the illegitimate son of
George II of Great Britain
George II (George Augustus; ; 30 October / 9 November 1683 – 25 October 1760) was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland, Ireland, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (Electorate of Hanover, Hanover) and a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Em ...
. The painting was subsequently owned by
Joseph Duveen
Joseph Duveen, 1st Baron Duveen (14 October 1869 – 25 May 1939), known as Sir Joseph Duveen, Baronet, between 1927 and 1933, was a British art dealer who was considered one of the most influential art dealers of all time.
Life and career
Jo ...
, who sold it to
Jules Bache
Jules Semon Bache (November 9, 1861 – March 24, 1944) was an American banker, art collector and philanthropist.
Early life
Jules Bache was born into a Jewish family in New York City. His father, Semon Bache é Bach emigrated to the Unit ...
in 1926 for $1.125 million, with the understanding that it was a genuine Velázquez.
[Vogel] Bache bequeathed the painting to the Metropolitan Museum in 1949. Darkened and discolored by varnish, the painting was restored and cleaned in 1953 and again in 1965, yet was in the 1960s attributed by a scholar as painted by the workshop of Velázquez, a judgment with which the museum concurred in 1979.
[Vogel]
In 2009, as a result of its most recent cleaning by Michael Gallagher of the museum's conservation department, murky, greenish tones were revealed to be gray, and fine details of brushwork and a long-obscured vibrancy of color were discovered, leading the museum to restore the traditional attribution to Velázquez.
[Vogel] In the words of
art historian
Art history is the study of artistic works made throughout human history. Among other topics, it studies art’s formal qualities, its impact on societies and cultures, and how artistic styles have changed throughout history.
Traditionally, the ...
Jonathan Brown, a leading authority on Velázquez, "One glance was all it took....The picture has been under my nose all my life. It's a fantastic discovery. It suddenly emerges Cinderella-like."
[Vogel]
Subject matter
The painting was painted from life with an informal handling, and Duveen may have had it retouched to appear more "old masterish".
[Vogel] The portrait closely resembles that of a figure at the far right of ''
Surrender of Breda'', also by Velázquez, which was painted to memorialize a victory by Spain over the Dutch. It is possible, though uncertain, that both portraits are self-representations of the artist.
[Vogel]
See also
*
List of works by Diego Velázquez
Notes
References
* Carol Vogel
"An Old Master Emerges From Grime" ''The New York Times''. September 10, 2009.
External links
''Portrait of a Man'' at Metropolitan Museum of Art''Velázquez ''
exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on ''Portrait of a Man'' (see index)
''Velázquez Rediscovered''
exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which focuses on ''Portrait of a Man''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Portrait Of A Man (Velazquez)
Portraits of men
1630 paintings
Portraits by Diego Velázquez in the Metropolitan Museum of Art