Volume 53, Number 20 · December 21, 2006
Master of the Natural
By Ingrid D. Rowland
Velázquez
an exhibition at the National Gallery, London, October 18, 2006– January 21, 2007
Velázquez
Catalog of the exhibition by Dawson W. Carr, with essays by Xavier Bray, John H. Elliott, Larry Keith, and Javier Portús
London: National Gallery Company, 256 pp., $60.00 (distributed in the US by Yale University Press); £19.95 (paper; available from the National Gallery)
In an alcove of the Galleria Doria Pamphilj in Rome, Diego de Silva y Velázquez's oil portrait of Pope Innocent X (1650) shares the intimate space with a bust of the same pope by Gianlorenzo Bernini, one of the greatest sculptors of all time (see illustrations on page 55). Bernini's bust is a tour de force of virtuosity, from Innocent's wispy beard to the unbuttoned button on his short cape (mozzetta), a magnificent image of a man otherwise renowned for his astonishing ugliness. But anyone who takes time to look at the Bernini portrait crosses the steely-eyed stare of Velázquez's painted pope, peering at his viewers as suspiciously, and as shrewdly, as he once peered across his throne room at the Spanish painter.
Review, 3684 words
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