Diego Velásquez and the Spanish Court

Velásquez, one of the most brilliant painters in the Western tradition, was also a courier, a diplomat of some distinction, and a close friend of King Phillip IV.

This lecture gives a survey of his career and concentrates on his final years when he artfully combined the Dutch and Italian visual traditions to elevate his own status and that of painting itself at a court that, despite its wealth from American colonies, was economically in decline and behind the times compared to the Baroque achievements in other European countries.

Emeritus Professor Richard Read is a Senior Honorary Research Fellow in Art History at the University of Western Australia where he was Professor of Art History.  He wrote the first book on the British art critic Adrian Stokes, which won a national prize, and has published in major journals on the relationship between literature and the visual arts, the history of…