Why is Velázquez such a celebrated painter? It's a hard question to answer,
but I think key to it is that he didn't just paint appearance. He didn't just paint
what people looked like. He somehow managed to catch
a piece of their soul. Cristoforo Segni, advisor to Pope Innocent, by Diego Velázquez. A painting that goes to the heart of the career of one of the greatest painters
who ever lived. 1649, he is sent by Philip IV
of Spain, to go to Rome and to acquire paintings and sculptures
for the Spanish court and to make casts after some of the most
remarkable statues in Rome. But Velázquez does much more than that. He paints some of the greatest pictures
in the history of art. Above all, in the field of portraiture, including perhaps his most celebrated
portrait of all. Portrait of this man's master,
Pope Innocent. When he saw Velázquez’s portrait
famously said, it’s “troppo vero”. It's too true. It's too much like me. I think that's
why Francis Bacon was so obsessed by it. Because when you look at that picture, you don't just see an old man
who happens to be pope. You see his craftiness,
you see his realpolitik. You have a sense of the stratagems
that he must have used to get to be that powerful man. And when you look at this picture,
this isn't the pope. This is the man who helps the pope. But I still think you have a sense of that
same, dare I say, very Italian, very 17th century sense of real politics. This is a man who gets things done. And Velázquez has arranged the composition
so that at least in the mind, he will always be face to face waiting for the word of Innocent. When Velázquez left Rome,
he didn't finish the picture. What he left behind him was,
as I imagine it, a magnificent sketch. The face fully realized,
perfectly achieved as we see it today. The rest sketched out,
everything indicated, but very little completed,
except we can assume, because it bears his signature,
that piece of paper in the sitter’s right hand,
which shows Diego Velázquez’s own mark. “I was here.” Now, how did the painting get to be
in the condition that we see it today? Well, Velázquez had a collaborator
who took over after he left,
who brought the painting to completion. A Cremonese artist called Pietro
Martire Neri, and the rest of the painting very much bears his hallmarks. We know that he was involved
because he has added his signature to that piece of paper right
at the bottom, almost as an afterthought. As if to say, “I was here too.
I helped Velázquez.” We see the evidence of Velázquez’s hand. We see the evidence of his mastery,
his perception, his piercing grasp of human personality,
above all, in the face of Cristoforo Segni. No one else could have painted that face. Look at the wetness in the eye. Look at the handling of that slightly
jowly flesh. Even look at the X-ray. There's no under-drawing.
Everything has been accomplished by the manipulation of oil paint, the manipulation of
pure unmodulated color. It reminds me of a lunch I had
years and years ago with Lucian Freud. And Freud only wanted
to speak about Velázquez at that lunch. He said to me, “Velázquez
is so great that he makes even Goya look like a mere journalist. And when I look at a painting by
Velázquez, I don't see a painting. I see a piece of human life. And that's what
I want to achieve in my art.” I think that really does
go to the heart of it, and it explains why Velázquez has always been
and perhaps always will be, the painter's painter.
