A comprehensive Study on Velazquez and the Spanish Court Painters-the Painter's Image, System and Society.

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1.While the history of the interpretation of Las Hilanderas in itself represents the vicissitudes in the historical evaluation of Velazquez, it offers a typical case for examining the "discovery" of Spain or the reception of its art in Western countries.2.Contrary to the traditional belief in Velazquez's lower aristocratic origins (hidalgo), it has been proved that he belonged to a wealthy but common family of converted Jewish (judeo-converso) descent, which had migrated from Portugal to Seville in the second half of the sixteenth century. Some of the family members were notary publics while others were engaged in the real estate business. This background seems to have been crucial to the development of his marked realism and humanistic spirit, which were to lead him to open up a new, distinctively Spanish ground in Baroque painting.3.Iconographically, Velazquez's Portrait of the Sculptor Martinez Montanez could be understood within the tradition of the paragone controversy, one of the common artistic topics in sixteenth-century Italy ; nevertheless, the painting needs to be considered beyond the limit of this dispute between painting and sculpture over superiority. It is not impossible, on the other hand, to interpret it in relation to the "sight" and the "touch" of a series of the "Allegory of Five Senses".4.In 1630's the Florentine sculptor Pietro Tacca was commissioned to make a bronze equestrian portrait of Philip IV. The idea of this dynamic large-scale equestrian statue standing up on the hind legs is presumably related to the so-called Madrid Manuscript of Leonardo da Vinci, which was then in possession of a Spanish nobleman and was well-known in the Madrid court.5.In his portraits of the royal family and courtiers Velazquez succeeds in synthesizing the two different traditions of the Spanish court portraits since the sixteenth century : the Flemish and the Venetian.