Arts Culture
I, Juan de Pareja
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| This celebrated portrait of Juan de Pareja is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's current exhibition Velazquez Rediscovered. Intending to impress his Italian colleagues, Velazquez displayed the painting beneath the portico of the Pantheon in March 1650. He succeeded; we are told that the picture "gained such universal applause that in the opinion of all the painters of the different nations everything else seemed like painting but this alone like truth." Juan de Pareja became a painter in his own right and was freed by VelĂ¡zquez in 1654. |
Literary Excerpt
By Elizabeth Borton de Trevino
I, Juan de Pareja is a Newbery Medal Book for young adult readers in which the life and career of seventeenth-century Spanish court painter Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez is narrated by his slave and assistant Juan de Pareja. Since there are not many written records that survive to tell us about Velázquez, the author relies heavily on his paintings to speak for him. The excerpt presented here exemplifies this approach and offers readers the opportunity to examine the portraits described and consider for themselves how much a portrait may say about its subject.
There was no doubt that [our hosts in Rome] were intimates of the Pope and of his Vatican officials, for it was only a matter of days before a special emissary arrived with gifts and greetings and Master was invited to a special audience with Pope Innocent X.
I went with Master as far as I could before the guards turned me back, and then I returned to St. Peter’s, to pray.
Master had told me that after his audience he would seek me in the church, and there he found me, in front of the Pieta. He did not say a word, nor did I, but we stood there, looking and marveling for a long time. Then Master touched me lightly, in signal that we would leave, and we went out into the brilliant morning sunshine.
“Let us take some refreshment,” he said, and we sat at a small outdoor table. A serving maid brought us wine and olives and slices of strongly flavored sausage.
“I am asked to paint a portrait of His Holiness,” Master announced abruptly, removing an olive pit from his mouth.
“Oh, Master! Oh, God be praised! Now they will recognize you for what you are all over Italy! All over the whole world!”
”I wish I were as certain of it as you are….I feel uneasy about this portrait. I must do some practice studies first. I arranged for the first sitting a month from now.” He began to flex his [just recently healed] hand and stare unhappily at his fingers.
“Paint me, Master! Paint a portrait of me!”
He had often made sketches of me and set the apprentices to painting me, but now I saw him studying me with a new look, a cool detached, intent look. I saw him mentally drawing my round cheek, my heavy nose and lips, the line of my mustache and beard, my eyes.
“Come,” he said, pushing away his wine and fruit. “Come, we will buy a canvas. Yes, I will paint you, Juanico. As you are, loyal and resourceful and good. And also proud and dignified. God guide my hand.”
There was a large window to the north in the room we were using as a studio, through which poured a clear shadowless light all day.
He placed me before him, told me to look directly at him, and to clasp my cloak so that it should fall over my left shoulder. It was an easy pose….I simply stood. The expression was what was harder to remember. Master wanted me to look at him as if he were a stranger, a passerby, a mere person. He wanted, he said, that look of dignity, with a hint of caution and reserve.
We worked every day, as long as there was light, and soon I got used to taking the same pose, corrected by a movement of Master’s hand to right or left, and to assuming the same emotion inside me which gave Master the expression he wanted.
On the second day he began laying on the color. As was his custom, he dropped a drape over his work each day, and he never allowed the model to see what he was doing. At the end of the fourth day, he called me to look.
There I stood, looking at myself, as if in a mirror. All apart from the likeness, which was startling (Master had no peer at that), the composition was harmonious and impressive in typical Spanish fashion, and yet there was an unusual glow of golden light around my head and on my skin, and an inner content which I can scarcely describe. It was as if Master had painted what you see on the outside, and also, just as clearly, what was there in the inside…the thoughts inside my head.
“Master, not because it is your Juanico, but I think it is the best you have ever painted! I see myself, and I know what I am thinking!”
Master gave me his brushes.
“I am content,” he said, and that was all. …
[He] was soon immersed in the work of painting the portrait of His Holiness and seemed to forget everything else… Forgotten entirely was his distress and worry about his painting hand. That hand was now more skillful than ever.
When at last he brought home the first study paintings of His Holiness, before he began on the final large canvas which would be the portrait, I studied them with care. The heads showed the Pope to be a man of strength and power; it was a cruel, even a wicked, face, I thought. But I withheld any judgment; no doubt the Pope, who had to rule many rebellious powerful persons and groups, had need of more than heavenly perceptions.
When Master began his final work in earnest, he took me along as he always did, to bring colors, change brushes, and perform all those other duties which were mine when he was working intensely. I watched the work grow, and I could see, even in the beginning, that it was going to be the greatest portrait he had ever done because the magnificent studies of our King, fine thought they were, could only show the reserve, the sadness, and the nobility of His Majesty, whereas the Pope was a man in whose eyes thousands of subtle thoughts flickered constantly.
As the work grew I became a little anxious for Master, as I saw the face of the pontiff emerging a sharp, ambitious, a difficult man. Could such things be? Perhaps. I was given a short lesson in this regard by Master himself.
We walked back from the Vatican one day, after the Pope had posed, and Master seemed in a mellow mood. He was whistling softly to himself, and I took courage to ask him a question.
“Master, may not His Holiness be offended when he sees how you have painted him?”
“Offended because I have shown him as he is? Not a handsome face, not even a merciful one. Is that what you mean, Juanico?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he will see himself, and he is used to himself, to what he sees reflected in the mirror. I rather think he is man enough to be pleased that I have seen him as tough and strong; he would not relish weakness in anyone, least of all in his own portrait. But we are all a bit fond of our own faces, Juanico, no matter how they seem to others. Even I.”
There was no doubt that [our hosts in Rome] were intimates of the Pope and of his Vatican officials, for it was only a matter of days before a special emissary arrived with gifts and greetings and Master was invited to a special audience with Pope Innocent X.
I went with Master as far as I could before the guards turned me back, and then I returned to St. Peter’s, to pray.
Master had told me that after his audience he would seek me in the church, and there he found me, in front of the Pieta. He did not say a word, nor did I, but we stood there, looking and marveling for a long time. Then Master touched me lightly, in signal that we would leave, and we went out into the brilliant morning sunshine.
“Let us take some refreshment,” he said, and we sat at a small outdoor table. A serving maid brought us wine and olives and slices of strongly flavored sausage.
“I am asked to paint a portrait of His Holiness,” Master announced abruptly, removing an olive pit from his mouth.
“Oh, Master! Oh, God be praised! Now they will recognize you for what you are all over Italy! All over the whole world!”
”I wish I were as certain of it as you are….I feel uneasy about this portrait. I must do some practice studies first. I arranged for the first sitting a month from now.” He began to flex his [just recently healed] hand and stare unhappily at his fingers.
“Paint me, Master! Paint a portrait of me!”
He had often made sketches of me and set the apprentices to painting me, but now I saw him studying me with a new look, a cool detached, intent look. I saw him mentally drawing my round cheek, my heavy nose and lips, the line of my mustache and beard, my eyes.
“Come,” he said, pushing away his wine and fruit. “Come, we will buy a canvas. Yes, I will paint you, Juanico. As you are, loyal and resourceful and good. And also proud and dignified. God guide my hand.”
There was a large window to the north in the room we were using as a studio, through which poured a clear shadowless light all day.
He placed me before him, told me to look directly at him, and to clasp my cloak so that it should fall over my left shoulder. It was an easy pose….I simply stood. The expression was what was harder to remember. Master wanted me to look at him as if he were a stranger, a passerby, a mere person. He wanted, he said, that look of dignity, with a hint of caution and reserve.
We worked every day, as long as there was light, and soon I got used to taking the same pose, corrected by a movement of Master’s hand to right or left, and to assuming the same emotion inside me which gave Master the expression he wanted.
On the second day he began laying on the color. As was his custom, he dropped a drape over his work each day, and he never allowed the model to see what he was doing. At the end of the fourth day, he called me to look.
There I stood, looking at myself, as if in a mirror. All apart from the likeness, which was startling (Master had no peer at that), the composition was harmonious and impressive in typical Spanish fashion, and yet there was an unusual glow of golden light around my head and on my skin, and an inner content which I can scarcely describe. It was as if Master had painted what you see on the outside, and also, just as clearly, what was there in the inside…the thoughts inside my head.
“Master, not because it is your Juanico, but I think it is the best you have ever painted! I see myself, and I know what I am thinking!”
Master gave me his brushes.
“I am content,” he said, and that was all. …
[He] was soon immersed in the work of painting the portrait of His Holiness and seemed to forget everything else… Forgotten entirely was his distress and worry about his painting hand. That hand was now more skillful than ever.
When at last he brought home the first study paintings of His Holiness, before he began on the final large canvas which would be the portrait, I studied them with care. The heads showed the Pope to be a man of strength and power; it was a cruel, even a wicked, face, I thought. But I withheld any judgment; no doubt the Pope, who had to rule many rebellious powerful persons and groups, had need of more than heavenly perceptions.
When Master began his final work in earnest, he took me along as he always did, to bring colors, change brushes, and perform all those other duties which were mine when he was working intensely. I watched the work grow, and I could see, even in the beginning, that it was going to be the greatest portrait he had ever done because the magnificent studies of our King, fine thought they were, could only show the reserve, the sadness, and the nobility of His Majesty, whereas the Pope was a man in whose eyes thousands of subtle thoughts flickered constantly.
As the work grew I became a little anxious for Master, as I saw the face of the pontiff emerging a sharp, ambitious, a difficult man. Could such things be? Perhaps. I was given a short lesson in this regard by Master himself.
We walked back from the Vatican one day, after the Pope had posed, and Master seemed in a mellow mood. He was whistling softly to himself, and I took courage to ask him a question.
“Master, may not His Holiness be offended when he sees how you have painted him?”
“Offended because I have shown him as he is? Not a handsome face, not even a merciful one. Is that what you mean, Juanico?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he will see himself, and he is used to himself, to what he sees reflected in the mirror. I rather think he is man enough to be pleased that I have seen him as tough and strong; he would not relish weakness in anyone, least of all in his own portrait. But we are all a bit fond of our own faces, Juanico, no matter how they seem to others. Even I.”
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