Diego Velázquez: “I would rather be the first painter of common things, than second in higher art”

Diego Velázquez

In the Mind of Great Artists

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“I would rather be the first painter of common things, than second in higher art.”
Diego Velázquez

We are not certain Velázquez said this phrase, but it is appropriate to discover the key that turned him into the painter of painters as even the greatest painter in history have called him.

He combined a superb technical skill and the capacity to show the soul of the characters, to give them life. He depicted with his brushstrokes the greatness and the misery of human nature.

In this painting, in which he represented for the first time a mythological scene, Velázquez decided to mix a god with ordinary, realistic and vulgar characters, some wonderful boozers and there is no place for idealization. On the contrary, their faces are old and worn out, but full of life.

Bacchus is the god that brings wine to men to alleviate them from earthly sufferings. And Velázquez makes him participate of the celebration as another man. A strong contrast of the profane and the sacred. By the way, it is the Baroque, that if had to be defined in just one world, it would be “contrasts.”

But if we think about it, earth and heaven, every day routine and mythology, misery and greatness, may be are closer than what we believe.

Ultimately, art is a testimony, an expression of life, a search of meaning. We will probably agree that there is more life in ordinary things than in the extraordinary ones.

Image: The Triumph of Bacchus or The Drinkers (1628/29)

Recommended links:

Velázquez, the Painter of the Greatness and the Miseries of Men.

Innocent X and the “troppo vero”.

Painting alla prima.

Baroque.

Six Paintings: Rubens, Wonderful Example of Baroque Painting.

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