Diego Velázquez, The Feast of Bacchus, 1628 X 1629

Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, P001170

This image via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vel%C3%A1zquez_-_El_Triunfo_de_Baco_o_Los_Borrachos_(Museo_del_Prado,_1628-29).jpg

This is the second of a series of Short & Sweet courses we shall be offering inspired by our History of Spain 10-weeker. But don’t worry! You really don’t have to be on that course to get a full appreciation of the artists on offer here. This course stands in its own right.

Our first artist was known in his adopted home as El Greco (The Greek). His highly personal version of mannerism angered and bewildered some (including, it would seem, the king). Yet it clearly moved other contemporaries very deeply. He never wanted for commissions.

In the twentieth century, he became a talismanic figure for a host of young artists, poets, and writers, and was hailed as a precursor of expressionism and even cubism. Perhaps his most appreciative follower was Pablo Picasso.

Diego Velasquez - the second ‘great’ of this course - was only 15 when El Greco died, and his career belongs to another epoch of Spanish history. In his late portraits of Philip IV, Spain’s decline is palpable.

Velasquez was exceptionally proud to be “the king’s painter”, and yet throughout his career he was so much more than that. A master of wonderfully engaging genre scenes, made all the more powerful by his skilful use of tenebrism (i.e. dramatic illumination), his free and bold brushwork gives all his subjects, from the king to the lowest commoner, an immediacy which still entrances today.

RJW F2321 Online freelance course (via Zoom)

A 5-hour short course, delivered via 2 x 2½-hour sessions on consecutive Saturdays (Saturday 4 & Saturday 11 November, 10.30-1.00.

£40 (individual registration); £72 (for two people sharing one screen).