"VULCAN'S FORGE" 425 ANNIVERSARY VEL ÁZQUEZ (2024) OUNCE

Velázquez, Diego Rodríguez de Silva and
Seville, 1599 - Madrid, 1660

He adopted his mother's surname, as was common in Andalusia, signing his name ‘Diego Velázquez’ or ‘Diego de Silva Velázquez’. He studied and practised the art of painting in his native city until he was twenty-four, when he moved with his family to Madrid and entered the service of the king from then until his death in 1660. Much of his work was destined for the royal collections and then passed to the Prado, where it is preserved. Most of the pictures he painted in Seville, however, went to foreign collections, especially from the 19th century onwards.

Considered the most important painter of the Spanish Baroque period, Diego Velázquez became a court painter at the court of Philip IV, which enabled him to study the great masters of national and international art. His enormous artistic output, including such emblematic works as ‘Las Meninas’, has left an indelible mark on the universal history of painting.

Vulcan's Forge

A figure suddenly appears on the left in a forge where various blacksmiths are working, dressed in an orange robe and wearing a laurel wreath, with rays of light emerging from his head. This is Apollo, who addresses himself to Vulcan, the blacksmith nearest to him, whose stance reveals his lameness. Everyone has stopped working, astonished by the news Apollo is recounting: the adultery of Vulcan`s wife, the goodness Venus, with Mars, god of war, whose armour is being made at the forge. This episode, taken from Ovid`s Metamorphoses, provides the basis for one of Velázquez`s most ambitious and unique works, marking a before and after in his career from both a technical and a compositional and spatial viewpoint.

The first known reference to the painting dates from 1634 when it was sold by the artist to Phillip IV for the Buen Retiro palace. In 1724 Palomino stated that it was painted during the artist`s first trip to Rome, at the same time as Joseph`s Bloody Coat brought to Jacob (monastery of El Escorial). The two works are of similar (although not identical) size and are also comparable in theme: they are large history paintings in which the artist directly confronted issues of pictorial narration rather than moral or devotional questions. In both works the central episode in the narrative is the transmission of a surprising piece of news and the range of reactions on the part of those hearing it. The representation of emotions notably interested the most important artists working in Italy around 1630, such as Guido Reni, Pietro da Cortona and Nicolas Poussin. In this sense, Velázquez`s two paintings can be seen as an immediate response to the local context and one of a bold and direct nature. The artist made no attempt to encumber his figures with concealing garments, rather choosing an episode that obliged him to demonstrate his perfect mastery of the system of human proportions and his ability to transform the entire body (not just the face and hands) into a bearer of emotions. The resulting painting is a remarkable demonstration of his abilities.